Broadway Journal

RECORD WEEK CAPS RECORD YEAR — WITH HIGHEST PRICES FOR LONG-RUNNING HITS (TABLE)

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Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda & director Thomas Kail/Tammy Shell

Broadway celebrated 2019 with a slew of milestones: highest-grossing week and year in history and best-attended week and year since at least 1984, according to the Broadway League.

Long-running shows such as Wicked  ($3.4 million), The Lion King  ($3.7 million) and Hamilton  ($4 million) recorded their best sales last week and charged their highest average prices, with tourists continuing to flock to Broadway’s biggest brands.

Hamilton,  whose composer-lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda, returns to the show next week for a short engagement in San Juan, Puerto Rico, became the first Broadway show to clear $4 million over eight performances.Continue Reading

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA TO PRODUCE & OCCASIONALLY STAR IN HIP-HOP SHOW

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Lin-Manuel Miranda & Tommy Kail/Tammy Shell

With a top-ticket (so far) of $119, Lin-Manuel Miranda and three co-producers are mounting an engagement early next year of Freestyle Love Supreme,  the improv hip-hop group that the Hamilton  creator has performed in since 2004.

“There is nothing like a live hip-hop show that is improvised from the first moment til the final curtain,” Miranda said in a statement. Previews begin on Jan. 30 at the tiny Greenwich House Theater. That’s three days after a run of Hamilton  is scheduled to end in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which stars Miranda in the title role.  Continue Reading

HOW ‘HAMILTON’ MAKES MONEY BY MAKING NEWS

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Original cast at the White House

LAST OF A SERIES: When the cast of Hamilton visited the White House on March 14, 2016, President Obama joked that the musical was the only thing that he and Dick Cheney agreed on. 

The excursion was a PR coup at a bargain price. It cost just $85,000, according to a financial statement filed with New York State by Hamilton Uptown LLC, which presents the juggernaut on Broadway. That’s a fraction of what a production spends to stage a single number on the Tony Awards. Hamilton Uptown bused the cast to Washington and put them up overnight, but they weren’t paid extra to perform on their day off, according to three people familiar with the trip.

Actors were told their attendance was optional. A White House gig is traditionally an honor, and this one yielded wall-to-wall news coverage and YouTube videos that have been viewed more than 23 million times. A production spokesman declined to comment.Continue Reading

‘HAMILTON’ PAYS MIRANDA & SELLER TENS OF MILLIONS A YEAR

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SECOND IN A SERIES: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop juggernaut is the first single-author show to win a Tony Award for best new musical since Jonathan Larson’s Rent, in 1996. With no writing partner to share the mammoth royalties and profits, the 38-year-old composer-lyricist-librettist and actor stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars should Hamilton have a long life.

Miranda amassed $12.7 million in author royalties and profit participation from the Broadway production in the 12 months ending in July 2017, according to a production financial statement filed with the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. That’s more than the $11.6 million median annual compensation for a large-company chief executive, based on a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.

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‘HAMILTON’ PROFITS SHOT PAST $160 MILLION LAST YEAR

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PART ONE OF A SERIES: Nearly three years after storming Broadway, Hamilton remains unrivaled in its moneymaking.

Current cast of Hamilton/Joan Marcus

The original production, which began previews at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in July 2015, distributed more than $102 million of profit through November 2017, according to documents filed with New York State. A Chicago engagement and tour that started in San Francisco paid out another $62 million through July 2017.

“Even after adjusting for inflation, it’s hard to imagine a show churning out profits the way this one is,” said Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, a producer and theater professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

We estimate that profits to-date for the Hamilton empire, which now has outposts in London and a second tour in Salt Lake City, exceed $250 million. Lead producer Jeffrey Seller declined to comment for this series through a spokesman, Sam Rudy.Continue Reading

KID-FRIENDLY SHOWS REACH A THIRD OF BROADWAY SALES

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Jamie Parker as Harry Potter/ Photo by Manuel Harlan

EXCLUSIVE: This season, every night is kids’ night on Broadway.

While theatergoers still pay up for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s historical hip-hop, Broadway’s fastest-growing onstage demographic are princesses, princes, witches and wizards. With the Harry Potter plays and Mean Girls early in previews and Frozen opening on Thursday, family-friendly sales are likely to stay elevated.

Broadway Journal hasn’t crunched the numbers for every season, so we can’t say that family show sales are at record levels — but industry veterans we spoke to said it seems that way.

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BROADWAY HAS RECORD 2017; AVERAGE TICKET SOARS TO $118

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Amanda Jane Cooper in Wicked/Joan Marcus

EXCLUSIVE: The year isn’t over, but it’s already demolishing records.

As of Dec. 24, Broadway grosses for 2017 totaled $1.59 billion, vs. $1.37 billion for all of 2016, which had been the bestselling calendar year. With a holiday bonanza likely this week, 2017 sales are on track to be up about 20 percent, according to data from the Broadway League, which represents producers and theater owners.

Broadway is hitting new heights as it weathers a 4 percent drop in international tourism in the U.S. in the first half of the year. (Numbers for 2017’s second half aren’t available.) Some say President Trump’s anti-immigration, “America First” rhetoric and agenda is a factor in the decline of international travelers. Yet thanks to a continued influx of Americans, overall tourism is up in New York City. “The domestic audience may be more attuned to Broadway than international visitors,” said George Wachtel, president of Audience Research & Analysis, which conducts market research about cultural tourism.

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HISTORIC ‘HAMILTON’ RAISES TOP TICKET TO RECORD $1,150

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A Hamilton ticket for Dec. 26

EXCLUSIVE: Don’t be shocked if Hamilton reports extra-huge holiday numbers. Tickets this week are going for a record $1,150.

With the increase, Hamilton is the first on Broadway to sell seats for four figures, before fees, that don’t benefit a charity or political campaign.

As of Sunday afternoon, a few $1,150 tickets were still available through December 30. (The show is dark on New Year’s Eve and Jan. 1.) They are the only ones remaining this year for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical about the founding fathers, besides those via resellers and a $10 lottery. The price is up 15 percent from last Christmas, when top tickets fetched a then-record $998. (Hello, Dolly! later matched $998 for the first row for some performances.) Shows typically raise prices for the holidays, when tourists pack the city.

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PUBLIC’S ‘HAMILTON’ RICHES COULD TOP $10 MILLION A YEAR

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The Public Theater

EXCLUSIVE: The Public Theater could earn upwards of $10 million a year for helping to develop Hamilton: An American Musical. But don’t expect it to do anything flashy with the cash.

The plan for now is to plow money back into the institution — rather than bankrolling new shows on Broadway or making Public Theater tickets free year-round a la Shakespeare in the Park.

First up, according to two people familiar with the situation: an ambitious renovation to  consolidate rehearsal space across the street, at 440 Lafayette, which will primarily replace facilities it rents around the city. And it’s setting aside reserves for capital expenses, operations and programming.

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BROADWAY RECOILS AT TRUMP UPSET

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Broadway performers and writers, who lampooned Donald Trump and his wife during the presidential campaign and raised millions for Hillary Clinton, expressed despair and defiance as  the developer and reality TV performer pulled off what Politico called the biggest upset in United States history. Continue Reading

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