Producer Scott Steindorff spent over three years courting Gabriel García Márquez for the rights to the book telling him that he was Florentino and wouldn't give up until he got the rights.
For the days of shooting in Cartagena, Giovanna Mezzogiorno was given an entire beautiful old house to live in. One night, she heard some strange noises behind a closet and thought it was a ghost. When help arrived and investigated, they encountered with an owl's nest. Two owls were found and later named after the main characters of the movie, Florentino and Fermina.
Was initially set to be filmed in Brazil because of security concerns in Colombia. In fact, director Mike Newell had already received all necessary inoculations for a stay in Brazil. Then, the Vice President of Colombia telephoned the producers, to insist that they make such a thoroughly Colombian story nowhere but Colombia. After two hours in Cartagena, and with many promises that the film company would be kept safe, the producer and director agreed to shoot there.
Considered to be one of the great novels of the 20th century, 'Love in the Time of Cholera' was originally published in 1985 in Colombia by Editorial Oveja Negra Ltda. and sent shock-waves throughout the literary world when it was published around the world three years later. García Márquez's singular novel soon gained a worldwide following and picked up numerous awards. The author won the coveted Nobel Prize in 1982 for his body of work, including his novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. Not a traditional love story, the novel explores the experience of a collection of complicated characters whose lives intertwine in an unnamed city over a half-century of intense change during the period between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The cast and crew and production team relocated to the Caribbean port of Cartagena for a few months of intense heat and monsoon weather to recreate the region made world famous in the novel.