Because there’s nothing that says “19th-century Americana” like post-apocalyptic wastelands, Little Women has joined that Willy Wonka WWII movie in the Gritty Reboot Hall Of Infamy. Deadline reports that The CW has put into development a series based on the classic novel, with a plot description that may sound like the kind of snarky joke in which The A.V. Club specializes, but we swear is real:
Little Women is described as a hyper-stylized, gritty adaptation of the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott, in which disparate half-sisters Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy band together in order to survive the dystopic streets of Philadelphia and unravel a conspiracy that stretches far beyond anything they have ever imagined – all while trying not to kill each other in the process.
Since that plot description has little to nothing to do with Alcott’s gentle tale of the passage from childhood to womanhood, it can be assumed that, in this version, Jo is a hacker, Meg a one-legged prostitute, Beth bleeds out after a fire fight in a tire yard, and Amy is a skilled knife fighter prone to dismembering her enemies in fits of amnesiac rage. Laurie is kidnapped and forced to serve as a breeding stud for an all-female biker gang in the second episode, prompting Marmee and the girls to climb into the family tank and teach those bitches a lesson in hope, faith, and charity—which, of course, are the names of their AKs.