Mafalda, the iconic character created by Quino, will be adapted into an animated series on Netflix under the direction of Juan José Campanella. Thus, the winner of the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2010 for The Secret in Their Eyes, will bring the young woman’s lucid nonconformity and accurate sayings to the small screen in a project that does not yet have a release date.
The streaming platform has announced this new adaptation of the character through its X account. The video with which it has announced the news shows a globe behind which the figure of Mafalda slowly appears, making it spin until it ends up in Argentina, her country of origin.
Precisely this 2024 marks 60 years since the late Quino published the first comic strip of the character. For Campanella, this project is “the biggest challenge” of his life, for having the opportunity to “turn Mafalda into an animation classic.” Through a statement, the director has confessed that he maintains a special affection for the original material, which accompanied him since he was “seven or eight years old” and from which he can “quote several jokes by heart.” “Mafalda and her friends not only made me laugh a lot, but from time to time they sent me to the dictionary. And every new word I learned came with the reward of a new laugh. Soon I was already one of Mafalda’s gang,” he says.
Furthermore, his main objective with this adaptation will be to “transfer one of the greatest works in the history of graphic humour to the audiovisual language” of today. “How can we reconnect the new generations who did not grow up with Mafalda with this great work? How can we bring its wit, its mordacity, to the children who today grow up on digital platforms? How can we, in short, transfer one of the greatest works in the history of Graphic Humour to the audiovisual language?” asks Campanella, recalling the questions that assailed him when Quino visited the set of his animated film Futbolín (Metegol).
Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, popularly known as Quino, passed away on September 30, 2020 at the age of 88. From 1964 to 1973, his Mafalda strips captivated readers of the weekly magazine Primera Plana and the newspaper El Mundo. Campanella maintains absolute respect for the creator and, in fact, in his statement he recalls that he knows that they will not be able to “elevate Mafalda, because she cannot be higher.”
Because of the legacy that Mafalda treasures, because of her complete admiration for her creator, in this adaptation they will try to maintain “the humor, the timing, the irony and the observations of Quino”, with the purpose of giving the character an adaptation that is at her level. “We know that we will not be able to elevate Mafalda, because she cannot be higher. But we dream that those of us who have been devoted to her since the first hour can share her with our children, and although there are things reserved only for adults, we can all have a laugh as a family, and why not, go to the dictionary from time to time,” she concludes, reiterating that it is a “challenge.”
This will not be the first time that Mafalda has appeared on the small screen, as she already had a series of 52 short films in 1972 directed by Catú and produced by Daniel Mallo and Óscar Desplats. In 1979 these pieces were organized by theme and turned into a feature film that was released in theaters. In 1994, Cuban director Juan Padrón brought the comic strip back to television with 104 short films that focused more on comic action than on the dialogue that characterized the first adaptation.