Theater News

American Classic To Kill a Mockingbird Will Fly to Broadway

Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin pens the stage adaptation.

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird will join the 2017-18 Broadway season with a new stage adaptation written by Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network) and directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher (Fiddler on the Roof).

Based on an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in the 1930s, Lee’s story of racial injustice and the destruction of childhood innocence centers on small-town lawyer and single father Atticus Finch (modeled after Lee’s father, attorney Amasa Lee), his young daughter, Scout, her older brother, Jem, and their mysterious neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley. Written during the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement — at a time when Jim Crow laws were still in effect in many Southern states — Lee’s novel held a mirror to the culture of racism of the Deep South.

Published in 1960, Lee's debut novel earned immediate acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and publishing in 10 languages within a year of its release. In 1962, was adapted into an Oscar-winning film with a screenplay by Horton Foote, directed by Robert Mulligan, and starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout.To Kill a Mockingbird is now considered one of the classics of modern American literature, with 50 million copies in print to date.