In a settlement agreement, the estate of Harper Lee, who wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird,” renewed the movie sequel and remake rights of Cecilia Peck and other successors and heirs to the makers of the original 1962 film.
In the years since Harper Lee’s death in 2016, her 1960 novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been reimagined in surprising new ways. It was released as a graphic novel in 2018, and adapted into a hit Broadway production by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.
Now, after a yearslong legal battle, the path has been cleared for another major adaptation: a film remake or sequel.
No plans have been announced, or are even being contemplated, according to the successors and heirs of the makers of the original 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck.
But unsealed documents filed in an Alabama federal court reveal how those successors and heirs successfully fought Lee’s estate to preserve the right to make any sequel or derivative movie, which they argued had been originally granted by Lee in 1961 and reaffirmed by her in 2008.
The dispute over the movie rights to Lee’s classic has been brewing for years. Shortly before her death, Lee tried to revoke film rights from the heirs of the original film producers. The producers entered a counterclaim, arguing that their earlier deal with Lee remained in effect, and that the estate had no right to enter any agreements with other producers or filmmakers for anything derived from “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Go Set a Watchman,” another novel by Lee, released in 2015.
The drawn-out fight pitted a best-selling American literary icon against the descendants of filmmakers who had produced an acclaimed movie that won the Oscar for best picture and that Lee herself professed to love.
As part of an arbitration settlement, which was reported earlier by the digital media company Puck, the Lee estate also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the heirs of the “Mockingbird” producer Alan Pakula; the director, Robert Mulligan; and Peck, who played the lead role as Atticus Finch, a small-town Alabama lawyer who fights to exonerate a wrongly convicted Black man. Cecilia Peck, the actor’s daughter, signed for the Atticus Corporation, which was party to the agreement. The agreement also gives the producers rights to make a film adaptation of “Go Set a Watchman,” with the caveat that the estate must sign off on it.
It was another legal setback for Lee’s estate, which recently lost a battle with the publisher of a stage version of “Mockingbird,” after an arbitrator ruled that the estate must pay more than $2.5 million in damages and fees to Dramatic Publishing, a theatrical publishing company that has licensed a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for decades.
Lee herself was such a fan of the 1962 film that she was firmly opposed to a sequel or remake that might dilute its legacy. In a 2008 letter to Peck’s widow, she was adamant that no one but Peck should embody Atticus onscreen: “Of course, he was the only Atticus & I hope there is some way to prevent a re-make, of any kind,” she wrote. “I know that we can ‘forbid’ forever, but things happen.”
In 2008, Lee entered a new agreement with the successors to the original producers, which gave them motion picture and other rights to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” while Lee reserved the literary, stage, television and single-person radio rights. Lee’s representatives tried to terminate those rights in 2015, just months before her death, but the arbitrator ruled that the effort to revoke rights had not been valid.
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In a statement, Tonja B. Carter, executor of the Lee estate, lamented the outcome of the arbitration, and said that Lee had been misguided when she entered the 2008 agreement.
“We are disappointed with the outcome of this arbitration,” she said. “It was based entirely upon a one-sided 2008 agreement that the heirs of Gregory Peck convinced Ms. Lee to sign, at a time when she was advised solely by her 93-year-old sister, even though it was entirely against her interests to do so. The 2008 agreement transferred extraordinarily valuable intellectual property rights owned by Ms. Lee in exchange for $1.”
A lawyer representing the producers, Mark Lee, said that his clients fought to retain film rights partly to prevent anyone else from making a movie that would undermine the spirit of the novel or the original film.
“They want to be proper guardians of those rights,” he said. “They want nothing to happen with those rights that they do not approve of, or that would not honor Ms. Lee’s legacy.”
He added that there were no immediate plans to forge ahead with a film based on Lee’s famous characters.
“My clients have no present intention to create or produce a remake or sequel,” he said. “I would never say never, but at present they have no such plans.”
