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'To Kill a Mockingbird' Headed for Broadway


FILE - Gregory Peck as attorney Atticus Finch, a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape, in a scene from the 1962 movie "To Kill a Mockingbird."
FILE - Gregory Peck as attorney Atticus Finch, a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape, in a scene from the 1962 movie "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird is coming to Broadway for the first time in a new stage version written by West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin, producers said Wednesday.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel about racism and injustice in the American South will make its Broadway debut in the 2017-18 season, producer Scott Rudin said.

Although the book was made into an Oscar-winning movie in 1962, starring Gregory Peck as noble lawyer Atticus Finch, and has been produced for the stage in various U.S. cities and in London, this will be the first time Mockingbird is seen on Broadway.

Lee's novel has sold more than 50 million copies and was thought to be the author's only book until an unpublished manuscript featuring some of the same characters was found and published last year called Go Set a Watchman.

Watchman, described as a first draft of "Mockingbird," astounded readers and critics by portraying the heroic Finch as a racist who supported segregation.

Sorkin is best known as the creator of the Emmy-winning White House television series West Wing. He also won an Oscar for writing the screenplay of The Social Network.

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    Reuters

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