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Greta Gerwig says Little Women was harder to make than The Revenant

Leonardo DiCaprio’s survival drama is known as being one of the toughest shoots ever

Ellie Harrison
Friday 20 December 2019 08:21 EST
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Little Women - Trailer

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Little Women director Greta Gerwig has suggested her film adaptation of the novel was harder to make than The Revenant.

The survival drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which was filmed in freezing weather conditions, is known as being one of the toughest shoots ever, with one crewmember calling it a “living hell”.

However, Gerwig said she is not sure the crew could have handled Little Women, starring Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh.

“I’m just going to go out on a limb and I’m going to say these were… like, you know how The Revenant was really hard to make? I don’t know if they could have made Little Women,” she told Sky News.

Referencing a scene in The Revenant where DiCaprio’s character shelters inside the carcass of a dead horse, Gerwig said she also demanded a lot from her actors.

“I don’t know, getting in a horse versus [laughs] like it was genuinely, it was a hard shoot, it was a long shoot, it was a shoot that required so much of these actors,” she said.

“It is a story of sisterhood, and it’s so beautiful, and they’re so wonderful and it’s so like delicious and cosy and, you know, lovely, but also they worked their asses off.”

At the time of The Revenant’s release, DiCaprio revealed he ate raw bison liver and went for swims in frozen lakes to get into character.

Gerwig’s Little Women is the eighth film adaptation of the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott.

It also stars Emma Watson, Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet and Eliza Scanlen.

Little Women will be released in UK cinemas on 26 December.

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