Harper Lee’s lawyer sues over Mockingbird play
THE producers of a hotly anticipated Broadway production of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are being sued by the late author’s estate over claims it departs from the spirit of the book.
According to a complaint filed in a court in Alabama the play wrongly alters Atticus Finch and other characters.
The play was written by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote the Oscar-wining film The Social Network about Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder, has previously suggested elements of that film were “made up”.
In a contract signed by Lee eight months before her death on Feb 19 2016 it was agreed the adaptation would not “depart in any manner from the spirit of the novel nor alter its characters,” and the author was paid $100,000. However, the legal complaint claims the script violates the agreement by changing the portrayal of Finch, the lawyer who represents a black man wrongly accused of rape, and also by introducing new characters. It was filed by Tonja Carter, a lawyer in Lee’s home town of Monroeville, Alabama, who represented the author in the final years of her life.
The play is scheduled to open in
New York in December.
Jonathan Zavin, who represents the production company of Scott Rudin – the US film and theatre producer who won a 2008 Best Picture Oscar for No Country for Old Men – said it would go ahead “to the best of my knowledge”.
In a statement Mr Rudin said: “This action undertaken by the estate of Harper Lee is an unfortunate step in a situation where there is simply artistic disagreement over the creation of a play that Ms Lee herself wanted to see produced. It is the kind of disagreement which one expects would be worked out easily between two parties who have a mutual interest in seeing a work produced.”
He added: “While we hope this gets resolved, if it does not, the suit will be vigorously defended.”
A lawyer for Mr Rudin’s production company said the script was a “faithful adaptation of a singular novel which has been crafted well within the constraints of the signed agreement” and accused the estate of being overly litigious.
‘[It is a] faithful adaptation of a singular novel which has been crafted well within the constraints of the agreement’