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Tina Fey is producing the movie version of ‘John Proctor is the Villain’

The Tony-nominated Broadway play, inspired by Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible,' is being adapted for the big screen.

In this Nov. 21, 2019, file photo, actress Tina Fey attends the American Museum of Natural History's 2019 Museum Gala in New York. She will be producing the film adaptation of 'John Proctor is the Villain.' (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
In this Nov. 21, 2019, file photo, actress Tina Fey attends the American Museum of Natural History's 2019 Museum Gala in New York. She will be producing the film adaptation of 'John Proctor is the Villain.' (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)Read moreEvan Agostini / Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Upper Darby native Tina Fey is no stranger to screen-to-stage-to-screen adaptations.

In 2017, she adapted the 2004 film Mean Girls (written by Fey and directed by Mark Waters), into a musical. Then, last year, she adapted that musical into a movie directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. and starring Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, and Lindsay Lohan.

Now, Fey is set to produce the film adaptation of John Proctor is the Villain, a Tony-nominated Broadway play. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fey and Marc Platt will produce the film adaptation of the play. Universal Studios acquired the film rights in what was described as a “competitive situation.”

Fey will produce the film with Platt, whose past producing credits include La La Land, Snow White, and other Broadway adaptations like Wicked and Dear Evan Hansen.

Kimberly Belflower, who wrote John Proctor, will be adapting the play for the screen. Stranger Things actor Sadie Sink, whose portrayal of Shelby Holcomb in the play won her a Tony nomination, will be its executive producer. Sink stopped playing the role earlier this month.

Casting and release date details have yet to be revealed.

Set in 2018 rural Georgia, John Proctor is the story of a group of young women reading Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible, which uses the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism. The eleventh graders — Beth, Nell, Ivy, Raelynn, Lee, Mason, Shelby, and others — are inspired to start a feminism club against the social backdrop of the burgeoning #MeToo movement, as they navigate their relationship with men. The girls’ English teacher, who eagerly joins the club as its adviser, is later revealed to be a sexual abuser.

In the past, Fey has been vocal against men who have been accused of sexual abuse, including Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

The play’s title references John Proctor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony landowner and The Crucible protagonist whose affair with a much younger woman contributes to the eventual execution of both him and his wife, Elizabeth, during the Salem witch trials.

The play, which debuted at Washington D.C.’s Studio Theatre in 2022, premiered on Broadway last April and ends its run in August.