Aaron Sorkin will adapt 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for Broadway
Aaron Sorkin. Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com
To Kill a Mockingbird will be coming to Broadway for the season that begins in 2017.
Producer Scott Rudin acquired the stage adaptation rights and hired screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to do the writing, the New York Times reports. Nonprofessional theatrical rights will continue to be held by Dramatic Publishing, which licenses a prior adaptation.
Rudin said the Atticus Finch in the Broadway play will be the principled character in Mockingbird, rather than the racist man portrayed in Harper Lee’s novel released last year, Go Set a Watchman. Sorkin, however, will take some liberties with Mockingbird by including new dialogue and scenes that aren’t fully depicted in the book.
“You can’t just wrap the original in Bubble Wrap and move it as gently as you can to the stage,” Sorkin told the Times. “It’s blasphemous to say it, but at some point, I have to take over.”
Barlett Sher will direct the play. He told the Times that Sorkin’s version will likely give a nod to contemporary issues of race. The book “raises so many important cultural, political and social questions that Aaron is well suited to,” Sher said.
