Greta Gerwig Has Clarified How Her ‘Little Women’ Movie Will Differ From The Many Previous Versions

Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born remake, starring Lady Gaga (and himself), received plenty of upfront complaints about remaking a classic that had already been remade multiple times. Blumhouse’s Black Christmas will soon join that same club, but Little Women might have topped them all in terms of the sheer volume of retoolings. To date, at least ten movie and TV adaptations (including a Japanese anime version) of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel have been released to varying degrees of success, and director Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version will make another.

Vanity Fair published a new feature interview with Gerwig, who hints at a slightly darker version of the sister-focused story to come. What could be darker than (probably unnecessary SPOILER ALERT) the tragic fate of Beth, you might ask? Gerwig says that she’s making her film more autobiographical and true to Alcott’s actual life circumstances, which were filled with more hardship:

We wanted to explore as much of Louisa’s real story as we could,” Ronan says. Gerwig discovered that the Alcotts were in much more dire financial straits than the “genteel poverty” of the March sisters. Alcott was out working at the age of 15, and growing up in Boston, the family moved something like 30 times. “Her life was a lot darker than what she allowed for in the book,” she added. That lens adds drama to the moments when the March sisters step into a world of luxury.

The first version of Little Women that Gerwig watched was, naturally, the 1994 version starring Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, and Kirsten Dunst, and given that Gerwig’s Lady Bird made such waves on the award circuit, one could expect Little Women to do the same. The cast certainly hints at such an outcome. The line up includes Emma Watson as Meg, Saoirse Ronan as Jo, Florence Pugh as Amy, and Eliza Scanlen as Beth. Oh, and Timothée Chalamet as Laurie, which Ronan told Vanity Fair that she enjoyed because “I loved that in Lady Bird, he was the one that broke my heart, but I got to break his heart in Little Women.” Get your tissues ready.

Vanity Fair also published a batch of first-look photos, which you can see in the below tweet. Laura Dern as Marmee March! Sold.

(Via Vanity Fair)