Broadway Journal

SEC PROBES BIG BROADWAY FUND’S ‘OUTSIZED’ RETURNS (EXCLUSIVE)

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By their own account, the founders of the Broadway Strategic Return Fund turned an overlooked investment niche into a bonanza.

Hunter Arnold, John Joseph and Curt Cronin established their hedge fund in January 2016 to invest in U.S. and U.K. live theater productions, plus tours, cast recordings and other ancillary businesses. With “few professional investors participating through a highly organized and disciplined investment process,” the fund’s Sept. 30, 2021 Due Diligence Questionnaire said, the founders believe “there is an untapped opportunity for outsized profits.”

The year-old marketing document declared, “$100,000 invested at [the] fund opening is currently valued at $416,280.” That’s double the rate of return of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over the same period — a remarkable result for an industry in which roughly 80 percent of commercial theater productions fail to fully repay their investors, let alone turn a profit.Continue Reading

LEA MICHELE WILL REPLACE ‘FUNNY GIRL’ STAR BEANIE FELDSTEIN AS FANNY BRICE

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People who need to see Lea Michele play Fanny Brice on Broadway are the luckiest people.

Lead producers Sonia Friedman, Scott Landis and David Babani announced today the Glee star is replacing Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl  beginning Sept. 6 at the August Wilson Theatre. Standby Julie Benko will play the lead Aug. 2 to Sept. 4 and for all Thursday evening performances starting on Sept. 8.Continue Reading

WILL ANGELS IN AMERICA MAKE ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’ A BLAST ON BROADWAY? (EXCLUSIVE)

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More than three decades after the chandelier first plunged at Phantom of the Opera and a helicopter flew out of Miss Saigon, a souped-up DeLorean will star in a planned Broadway transfer of the Olivier Award-winning musical Back to the Future.

Producer Colin Ingram is in talks to bring a big-budget adaptation of the 1985 Michael J. Fox blockbuster to a Shubert house next summer, people familiar with the London hit said. Last week, Ingram filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $23.5 million for the Broadway production.  Co-producers of the show on the West End, which has been running for nine months and recently extended to February 2023, include the Frankel-Baruch-Viertel-Routh group, Hunter Arnold and Gavin Kalin — all familiar names around the Main Stem.Continue Reading

TONY NOMINATIONS: WILL ‘SIX’ OR ‘MJ’ RAIN ON ‘STRANGE LOOP’S PARADE?

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Two musicals in the past half-century have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama before they were up for Tony Awards:  Rent in 1996 and Hamilton in 2016. Both went on to win the Tony for best musical.

While statistically insignificant, that’s encouraging for A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s idiosyncratic meditation about a young black gay man writing a musical, which won a Pulitzer in 2020.Continue Reading

JACKSON ESTATE WILL BE THERE FOR OUTSIZED ‘MJ’ PROFITS (EXCLUSIVE)

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If MJ  The Musical becomes a box office sensation, Paris Jackson, Bigi Jackson, Prince Jackson and the executors of their father’s estate stand to enjoy a bonanza.

Typically, half of a Broadway show’s adjusted net profit is shared among the lead producers. The other half goes to investors, who also qualify for some lead producer profits by raising or investing large sums. On MJ,  however, “the entire 50% share of Adjusted Net Profits [due the lead producers] will be paid to the Estate,” according to an investor operating agreement obtained by Broadway Journal.Continue Reading

WITH SONDHEIM’S DEATH, ‘COMPANY’ HAS LINK TO ‘RENT’

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Stephen Sondheim’s death on Friday morning — an unexpected loss to the people in his life and to musical theater — attaches a new significance to the third Broadway revival of 1970’s Company. The musical, which marked the beginning of Sondheim’s decade-long collaboration with director Hal Prince, is now the last production that Broadway’s most revered composer-lyricist of the past 50 years directly worked on.Continue Reading

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