The Mousetrap Run Prevents Filming

British writer Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap has run almost continuously in London's West End since 1952, pausing only from March 2020 to May 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its contract forbids the rights holders from producing a film adaptation until the West End run has closed for at least six months. Producer John Woolf bought those rights in 1956, but he and his heirs have never been able to use them. Christie also asked that its source story, Three Blind Mice, remain unpublished in the UK while the play continued, although it appeared in a 1950 US collection.

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