Maybe Happy Ending achieved an unlikely Broadway rebound.
During previews last fall, the beguiling one-act musical about love and loss in the digital age failed to crack $300,000 a week at the box office. It likely lost money every week for its first 10 weeks at the Belasco Theatre, based on an early production document estimating that it needed published weekly box office grosses of about $820,000 to break even. Few shows recover from a deficit that daunting.Continue Reading
Jonathan Groff is scheduled to perform twice at the Tony Awards on Sunday. The enviable television exposure should confirm his show, Just in Time, as the most commercially successful new musical to-date of the 2024-25 Broadway season.
Groff, 40, who was Tony-nominated for playing King George III in Hamilton, will join other original company members to mark 10 lucrative years on Broadway; and lead Just in Time, in which Groff plays the 1950s and ’60s singer-songwriter-actor Bobby Darin. Last week, the average ticket price at Circle in the Square –which Derek McLane refashioned as a faux nightclub — was $213.52. That’s the highest average ticket price of any musical now on Broadway.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: A Federal judge has ordered producer Joey Parnes and two of his companies to pay more than $200,000 owed to designers of his short-lived, 2023 revival of Bob Fosse’s Dancin.’
In August 2024, Parnes signed a stipulation that six Dancin‘ designers were shortchanged by a total of $202,683. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer confirmed an arbitrator’s award that Parnes and two limited liability production companies he controls pay the shortfall to the designers’ union, plus interest and attorney’s fees.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: Good Night, and Good Luck has repeatedly set weekly records as the highest-grossing play in Broadway history. Nonetheless, the George Clooney blockbuster projected it will qualify for a $2.5 million subsidy from New York State, according to a production operating agreement distributed to investors.
Glengarry Glen Ross, the hit revival starring Kieran Culkin, expects $1.9 million from the state. Othello, which charges as much as $921 to see Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, projected $2 million in state aid.Continue Reading
Broadway’s blockbuster numbers indicate that the box office has recovered from the pandemic. But as production costs continue to soar, the investment climate for everything besides star-driven plays remains grim.
Ahead of the Tony Awards nominations announcement tomorrow morning, I studied the 2024-25 season, which wraps in four weeks. It’s on track to achieve record revenue, barring a hurricane or Covid outbreak that sidelines George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.Continue Reading
Lear deBessonet is preparing to stage a Broadway revival of Ragtime at the Vivian Beaumont Theater this fall, in her debut as artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater.
Previews are scheduled to begin September 25 ahead of an Oct. 16 opening, people familiar with the production said.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: A federal bankruptcy judge has approved a reorganization plan for Hal Luftig Co. that gives the busy producer breathing room in his six-year court battle against a deep-pocketed investor.
The litigation involves the 2013 Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots, which Luftig produced with Daryl Roth. (Roth isn’t involved in the dispute.) In 2022, an arbitrator found that Luftig and his company breached an agreement with the Reno, Nevada-based investor Warren Trepp regarding proceeds from the blockbuster. Continue Reading
Sia, the Australian pop star whose songs are featured in the jukebox musicals Moulin Rouge! and Hell’s Kitchen, is developing a theater score of her own.
The singer-songwriter behind “Chandelier” is writing music and lyrics for an off-Broadway adaptation of the 2017 independent movie Saturday Church. Damon Cardasis, who wrote and directed the critically acclaimed story about a gay teenager’s difficult coming of age, is collaborating on the musical’s book with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames (Fat Ham).Continue Reading
With concerns about Covid on the wane, aging theatergoers returned to Broadway last season, according to a new report by the Broadway League.
As the audience shrank modestly for every age group under 50 years old, ticket buyers who are 50 and up increased, according to the trade association’s new demographic study.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: The highest-stakes succession race on Broadway appears to be over. Jeff T. Daniel is being positioned to take the reins at the Shubert Organization, Broadway’s largest landlord, people familiar with the company said.
Daniel joined Shubert in the newly created position of chief strategy officer in September 2023, recruited from the touring giant Broadway Across America. He’s also chairman of the government relations committee of the Broadway League trade association. He’s in line to succeed Robert E. Wankel, Shubert’s 78-year-old chairman and chief executive, who’s been at the company for 50 years.Continue Reading
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