Against its budget of $18 million, the film was a success. It grossed $5,303,288 and ranked #6 at the box office on its opening weekend and eventually earned $50,083,616. The film opened on 1,503 screens in the US and Canada on December 21, 1994.
March returns home just prior to Christmas. Amy thrives as Aunt March's new companion. Prior to Beth's illness, Jo had been Aunt March's companion for several years, and while she was unhappy with her position she tolerated it in the hope her aunt one day would take her to Europe.
Awaiting Marmee's return, Meg and Jo send Amy away to live with their Aunt March. While Marmee is away, Beth contracts scarlet fever from a neighbor's infant. March is wounded in the war and Marmee is called away to nurse him. Laurence becomes a mentor for Beth, whose exquisite piano-playing reminds him of his deceased daughter, and Meg falls in love with Laurie's tutor John Brooke.
Laurence, whose grandson Theodore, nicknamed "Laurie", moves in with him and becomes a close friend of the March family. Living next door to the family is wealthy Mr. As a means of escaping some of their problems, the sisters revel in performing in romantic plays written by Jo in their attic theater. With their father away fighting in the war, the girls struggle with major and minor problems under the guidance of their strong-willed mother, affectionately called Marmee. For the purposes of this ranked guide, I have focused on the major film and television adaptations.The film focuses on the March sisters - beautiful Meg, tempestuous Jo, sweet Beth, and romantic Amy - growing up in Concord, Massachusetts during and after the American Civil War.
Little Women has been adapted to the screen more than a dozen times, including two silent films released in 19, multiple television serials between the 1950s and 1970s, two Japanese anime series, a contemporary Lifetime reimagining and a Hindi language web series. Alcott took the internal lives of teenage girls seriously and crafted for them a timeless tale that is a drama, a comedy, a romance and an adventure all at once. These fans created what was essentially the world's first YA sensation. Yet, young readers flocked to Alcott's hilarious and devastating coming-of-age vignettes showcasing covetous beauty Meg, tempestuous writer Jo, shy musician Beth and self-involved artist Amy. When Louisa May Alcott published her semiautobiographical novel Little Women in 1868, few could have predicted this domestic story about four Massachusetts sisters surviving genteel poverty, the Civil War and the transition from childhood to adulthood would become a smash hit.