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The producers and creative team behind Broadway’s upcoming musical adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook say they are “encouraged” by the author’s “strong statement of support of the Lgbtq+ community today,” and note in a statement of their own that they have “complete freedom to create a very new piece of art from the source material of the book” that “that reflects our core values of diversity and inclusion.”

The pointed assertion of artistic independence came just several hours after Sparks released a lengthy statement (read it below) in which he took issue with last week’s Daily Beast article that portrayed the hugely successful romance writer as homophobic and racist.

Included in the Daily Beast article – which detailed a lawsuit that pits Sparks and the faith-based Epiphany School of Global Studies (which he co-founded) against former headmaster Saul Benjamin. The fired Benjamin is suing Sparks and the Epiphany board over his dismissal,...

Update, with attorney response The Notebook author Nicholas Sparks has released a lengthy, 500-word-plus statement in which he expresses “regret” and apologizes for his words that “have potentially hurt young people and members of the Lgbtq community, including my friends and colleagues in that community.”

But an attorney for the former headmaster of the faith-based school co-founded by Sparks responded to today’s statement by countering that the bestselling author’s old emails “continue to speak for themselves and demonstrate Nicholas Sparks’s unmistakable lack of support for an Lgbt club or the students affected by anti-lgbtq+ bullying at the school.”

Sparks’ new statement arrives four days after the publication of an article on The Daily Beast website that quoted and/or reprinted old emails written by Sparks that suggested anti-gay bias. The emails came to light during a legal battle pitting Sparks and the faith-based Epiphany School of Global...

This week, the Daily Beast reported that Nicholas Sparks, author of the hugely popular romance novels The Notebook and A Walk to Remember, had tried to ban Lgbt clubs and student protests at the Epiphany School, a Christian academy Sparks founded that is located in New Bern, North Carolina. Saul Benjamin, a former headmaster at the Epiphany School, is suing Sparks, claiming that he and other school board members “unapologetically marginalized, bullied, and harassed members of the School community whose religious views and/or identities did not conform to their religiously driven,...

For the second time in recent months, real-world controversy has visited the make-believe world of Broadway musicals.

Nicholas Sparks, whose 1996 novel The Notebook is being turned into a Broadway musical by, among others, playwright and This Is Us producer Bekah Brunstetter, was slammed in a Daily Beast article today for seemingly anti-gay emails he sent to the former headmaster of the faith-based prep school Sparks co-founded in 2006.

The situation echoes – if at a much lower volume – the recent and far-from-over controversy trailing the Michael Jackson-based musical Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.

Just this week, Vanessa Hudgens confirmed that she would take part in the first staged reading of the musical Notebook adaptation at Vassar and New York Stage & Film’s prestigious annual play development incubator called the Powerhouse. Others reportedly set to take part in the one-time-only reading on June 23 are Jelani Alladin, Nicholas Belton, Candy Buckley,...

Nicholas Sparks is locked in legal battle with the former headmaster of the school he co-founded amid claims that The Notebook author fostered a discriminatory environment, even once allegedly banning students from forming an Lgbt club.

The best-selling romance novelist, 53, co-founded the Epiphany School of Global Studies in New Bern, North Carolina in 2006, as an institution “anchored in the Judeo-Christian commandment to Love God and Your Neighbor as Yourself,” according to its mission statement.

Saul Benjamin came on as CEO and headmaster in 2013, and, upon noticing the school was lacking in diversity, took it upon himself to implement change, according...