Aaron Sorkin’s hit stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” will not return to Broadway. The show, which closed in January amid Jeff Daniels’ departure from the cast and a severe Covid-19 surge, was always thought to be on a temporary hiatus. But a series of emails unearthed by the New York Times reveal the tension among Sorkin, director Bartlett Sher, and producer Scott Rudin, who still maintains the stage rights to the production even though he reportedly stepped away from an active role after misconduct allegations emerged against him. At the last minute, Rudin apparently pulled the plug on the entire production and scrapped plans to re-mount it at the Shubert Theatre this fall.

Sorkin and Sher wrote that “at the last moment, Scott reinserted himself as producer and for reasons which are, frankly, incomprehensible to us both, he stopped the play from reopening.”

“The...