“To Kill A Mockingbird,” Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s beloved coming-of-age novel, will not return to Broadway as previously announced.
A spokesperson for the production declined to comment on the cancellation to Variety. News of the hasty cancellation was first reported by entertainment news channel Showbiz 411.
The stage play, which opened on Broadway in 2018, played its final performance at the Shubert Theater on January 16. At the time, it was reported that the show would reopen in June at the Belasco Theatre. The date was later moved to November 2, with the planned venue change to the Music Box Theatre. Now, the play will be shut down entirely, according to a New York Times report.
In an email obtained by the Times sent Thursday night to the show’s cast and crew, playwright Sorkin and director Bartlett Sher blamed the decision on the show’s original executive producer, Scott Rudin. Sorkin and Sher wrote in the email that Rudin, who stepped down from an active role on the show last year after allegations of his abusive behavior toward staff broke, “was reinstated as a producer and for reasons that, frankly, are incomprehensible to both of us.” , stopped the reopening of the work”.
The Times also obtained an email Rudin sent to Sorkin and Sher on Friday, in which the producer credited his decision to concerns about the show’s profitability if it opens later this year.
“The reason I chose not to bring ‘TKAM’ back has to do with my lack of confidence in the weather to play next winter,” Rudin said in the email. “I don’t think a ‘Mockingbird’ comeback would have been competitive in the market.”
When “To Kill A Mockingbird” opened in 2018, it was an immediate financial success, collecting an average of $2 million in ticket sales per week and recouping its investment in 19 weeks. It also received rave reviews and was nominated for nine awards at the 2019 Tony Awards, with Celia Keenan-Bolger winning for her role as Scout Finch. It ended up at the center of controversy after Rudin’s lawyers shut down dozens of community and nonprofit productions of a different adaptation of playwright Christopher Sergel’s novel that opened in 1991, for which the producer ultimately he apologized
When the play resumed performances last October, after closing on Broadway in March 2020, original star Jeff Daniels returned to the role of Atticus Finch, and the show continued to sell well. However, after Daniels left on Jan. 2 amid a slump in Broadway sales amid the pandemic, the show’s grosses dropped significantly.
A production of the play opened in London’s West End this March, starring Rafe Spall and Gwyneth Keyworth as Atticus and Scout. In addition, this April he began a national tour of the United States in Boston. Both productions will remain open like the shutters of the Broadway production.