Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is set to go ahead in December, after the estate of Harper Lee and the play’s producers “amicably settled” their lawsuits.
The late author’s estate had filed a lawsuit in Alabama in March, claiming that Sorkin’s script made too many changes to Lee’s characters, in particular that of the lawyer Atticus Finch. According to the lawsuit, the estate had told producer Scott Rudin’s company Rudinplay that “for this classic, it is really important that any spin put on the characters, not least Atticus, does not contradict the author’s image of them”. It said that Lee herself portrayed Atticus as “a model of wisdom, integrity and professionalism”, citing an interview in which Sorkin called the lawyer an apologist for the racists around him.
Rudin hit back in April, filing a $10m (£7.4m) countersuit that called for the estate’s case to be dismissed, claiming that it “has rendered it impossible for the play to premiere as scheduled … and unless this dispute is resolved in the immediate future, the play will be cancelled”. Rudin offered to stage the play in a courthouse so the judge could decide if it deviated from the spirit of Lee’s classic novel.
Lee’s estate’s lawsuit referred to “heated” conversations between Rudin and the late author’s lawyer Tonja Carter, and Rudin’s countersuit was also strongly worded. “The agreement did not give Ms Lee approval rights over the script of the play, much less did it give her a right to purport to edit individual lines of dialogue,” it said. “It certainly did not give such rights to Ms Carter, who is not an author, editor, literary agent or critic, and has no known expertise whatsoever in theatre or writing.”
But on Thursday, Rudinplay and Lee’s estate announced the litigation had been settled amicably, and that the Broadway production would open as planned on 13 December at the Shubert theatre, with Jeff Daniels taking the role of Atticus Finch. The statement did not reveal details of the settlement – nor of the final shape the character of Finch will take.
