Film News

To Kill a Mockingbird Will Return to Theaters for Special Big-Screen Presentation

Harper Lee’s classic story is currently on Broadway in a new adaptation by Aaron Sorkin.

Mary Badham and Gregory Peck as Scout and Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Mary Badham and Gregory Peck as Scout and Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.
(image provided by J2 Communications)

The big-screen adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird — a novel that was recently adapted into a Broadway play that's still running at the Shubert Theatre — will return to more than 600 movie theaters nationwide on March 24 and 27 as part of the yearlong TCM Big Screen Classics series from Fathom Events. The film presentations will feature special commentary both before and after the film by TCM Primetime host Ben Mankiewicz.

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 — and first published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird held up a mirror to the ingrained culture of racism in the Deep South.

With a screenplay by Horton Foote and directed by Robert Mulligan, To Kill a Mockingbird made its screen debut in 1962, one year after Lee's now-classic novel earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The film famously stars Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout, and marks the film debuts of Robert Duvall, William Windom, and Alice Ghostley.

The novel's new stage adaptation, which opened on December 13, 2018, is written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Bartlett Sher. Jeff Daniels heads the cast as Atticus Finch, alongside Celia Keenan-Bolger (Scout), Will Pullen (Jem), Gideon Glick (Dill), Danny Wolohan (Arthur "Boo" Radley), Frederick Weller (Bob Ewell), Gbenga Akinnagbe (Tom Robinson), Stark Sands (Horace Gilmer), Dakin Matthews (Judge Taylor), Erin Wilhelmi (Mayella Ewell), LaTanya Richardson Jackson (Calpurnia), Neal Huff, Danny McCarthy, Phyllis Somerville, and Liv Rooth.

For tickets and more information about the nationwide screenings, click here.