The CW is moving forward with a gritty, stylized, and "dystopic" adaptation of Little Women for TV. Oh boy.
NewsFor generation after generation, young readers of every gender, stripe, and creed have found their reflections in the earnest but playful visages Jo, Meg, Amy, Beth, and the rest of the March Family. As the resilient heroines of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women book series, as well as the stars of famed film adaptations, these sisters soldiered through the homefront of the American Civil War in Massachusetts, reenacted Shakespeare in their attic on wintry morns with the sweet neighborhood boy, Laurie, cut their hair for the cause, and even grew into fine young women who could survive a young death in the family.
It’s all so picturesque that it is hard to imagine what else could be added to this classic yarn. Well, besides a “gritty” and stylized reboot with “dystopic” conspiracies. And presumably, a futuristic and Orwellian Big Brother government is around the corner too because, you know, dystopia.
Enter CW’s potential Little Women series,a television project that looks to reinvent the trials and travails of 19th century heroines into a “hyper-stylized, gritty adaptation.” As reported by Deadline, this version of Little Women will feature the sisters of Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy as half-siblings forced to ban together on the “dystopic” streets of Philadelphia (there’s that word again) as they unravel a conspiracy that stretches beyond their greatest fears—assuming they don’t kill each other first.
The would-be pilot has had a script ordered and is being written by Alexis Jolly, and the series would be produced by actor Michael Weatherly and CBS Studios.
There are several famous adaptations of Little Women, including George Cukor’s 1933 film version which starred a young Katherine Hepburn as Jo, and a rather awful 1949 technicolor iteration with June Allyson as Jo, Janet Leigh as Meg, and Elizabeth Taylor as Amy. However, I’d argue that the definitive film version of the story was the Gillian Armstrong movie in 1994 that featured Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst, and Christian Bale in one of the few roles where I can recall him smiling.
Honestly, I did not care for that movie or story at all when I first saw it, but I was also seven. Now, I realize what the folksy charm of Thomas Newman’s below orchestrations needed all along to have appealed to me then: grim dystopia. It’s such an obvious match…
