The estate of "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee is suing the producers of a much-anticipated Broadway adaptation of the US novel, saying that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's script deviates too much from the novel and violates a contract. In a complaint filed on Tuesday in the federal court in Alabama, the estate said that some characters were altered and alleged that the script did not present a fair depiction of small-town Alabama in the 1930s.

The chief dispute is the assertion that Sorkin's portrayal of the much beloved Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer who represents a black man unjustly accused of rape, presents him as a man who begins the drama as a naïve apologist for the racial status quo, a depiction at odds with his heroic image in the novel, the New York Times reported.