Broadway Journal

‘OPERATION MINCEMEAT’ TARGETS GOLDEN THEATRE

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EXCLUSIVE: Producers of Operation Mincemeat  are raising at least $11.5 million to transfer the critically acclaimed, Olivier Award-winning musical to Broadway, according to financial documents. People familiar with the show said the plan is to open at the Golden Theatre early next year as part of the current, 2024/25, season.

The Golden is home to Stereophonic — the Tony Award-winning play about a fractious rock band making an album–  which recently “extended by popular demand for a final time” to Jan. 12, 2025.Continue Reading

JUJAMCYN PROFIT REVEALED IN RARE DISCLOSURE

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Broadway investors stand to lose about $200 million on the 2023-24 season’s flops. For Jujamcyn Theaters, the Broadway landlord, it was a different story.

Jujamcyn earned a profit of $34 million on revenue of $116 million in the year ending March 30, 2024. The disclosure, in a filing in the U.K. by Jujamcyn’s new parent, ATG Entertainment, is the first time in memory that a major commercial Broadway theater owner shared its financials.Continue Reading

OSKAR EUSTIS’ LONG GOODBYE

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EXCLUSIVE: Before the Public Theater fired a fifth of its staff, the downtown institution faced a financial crisis.

When it disclosed layoffs last July, the renowned nonprofit company said that it hoped to avoid a budget deficit in the year ending in August 2023. Instead, expenses exceeded revenue by $8 million that season, according to its most recent audited financial statement, which was obtained by Broadway Journal. That was the 70-year-old organization’s biggest budget deficit in at least a decade.Continue Reading

‘HELL’S KITCHEN’ AIMS TO DEFY BIG BUDGET SLUMP

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In a tough time for big Broadway productions, Hell’s Kitchen is burning up the box office.

Despite its surprise loss to The Outsiders for the Best Musical Tony Award, Alicia Keys’ semi-autobiographical show has consistently posted the biggest weekly ticket sales among new musicals from the past season. Just over two months after opening, it’s paid back 10 percent of its $22 million capitalization to investors.Continue Reading

‘OUTSIDERS’ WIN TONY RUMBLE; ‘SUFFS’ SCORES TOO

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The Outsiders  may have had the inside track at the Tony Awards after all.

In awarding Best Musical to the $22 million adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel and Francis Ford Coppola movie about an ill-fated gang of teenagers in 1967 Tulsa, Oklahoma, voters rewarded Danya Taymor’s meticulously staged production over the propulsive glitz of Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen, the presumptive favorite in the category going into the evening.Continue Reading

TONY OVERLORDS HOLD FIRM ON CO-PRODUCERS STAGE BAN

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Tony Award leaders today affirmed their decision to bar Broadway co-producers from the stage of the David Koch Theater on June 16, while offering the investors and bundlers a consolation prize: live shots of them elsewhere in the theater on Broadway’s big night.

According to a Tony Awards memo circulating this afternoon, a “Voice of God” in the Koch Theater will announce a specific category during a commercial break and invite co-producers to gather in the lobby off the first tier. When a winning show is named, the triumphant cluster will congregate on a riser for their live moment on primetime television.Continue Reading

OPENING DOORS: DAVID CARPENTER ON CAROLINE PRUGH

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While working as an arts reporter for Bloomberg News, I met Caroline Prugh in March 2006 at the now-defunct Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. She was there on behalf of the revered producer and general manager Stuart Thompson. Just 32, Caroline seemed to know everything about theater, commercial and nonprofit, past and present.

Keenly insightful and quick to laugh, Caroline later left the safety of Stuart Thompson’s office to go to graduate school and become a playwright. During the pandemic, she created interactive video dramas with her close friend David Carpenter. Continue Reading

DONALD TRUMP CONVICTED OF FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS

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Donald J. Trump, the former president who received a Broadway producing credit in 1970, was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.

For further information about the Manhattan jury’s historic verdict, see The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

Paris is Out!, a comedy by Richard Seff that ran 96 regular performances in 1970 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, was produced in association with Trump, according to the Internet Broadway Database.

TONY AWARDS TO BAR CO-PRODUCERS FROM STAGE (EXCLUSIVE)

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The Tony Awards are enmeshed in a high-stakes dispute over who gets stage time on Broadway’s big night.

Some co-producers — whose primary role is to invest or raise money for shows — have been informed by Tony Award staffers that they aren’t welcome onstage at the David H. Koch Theater on June 16. In recent years as production budgets swelled, swarms of co-producers have taken the stage when awards were handed out for the categories of best musical, play, musical revival and play revival.Continue Reading

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