Charlotte St. Martin, who’s led the Broadway League trade association since 2006, will step down on Feb. 16. The sudden departure occurs amid an industry changing of the guard as Broadway struggles to recover from the pandemic and respond to calls for greater diversity.Continue Reading
‘STEREOPHONIC’ & PAPER MILL ‘GREAT GATSBY’ ON DECK FOR MUSICAL-HEAVY 2024
Producers are working on two high-profile additions to the busy 2023-24 Broadway season: Stereophonic, an ecstatically reviewed play with music about a fictional mid-1970s rock band creating an album; and The Great Gatsby via Paper Mill Playhouse, one of two Broadway-bound musicals based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Roaring ’20s novel.
John Johnson, Sue Wagner and Greg Nobile are in discussions to move Stereophonic to the John Golden Theatre, following a sold-out, two-and-a-half-month run at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway, people familiar with the plans said. Continue Reading
LEAGUE TOUTS SILVER LINING IN SMALLER AUDIENCE
Last season, 25 to 49-year-olds who attended Broadway shows outnumbered those 50 and up for the first time since 2008-09.
It’s too early to proclaim a generational shift. The audience was younger in the year ending May 21, 2023, than in the prior full season, 2018-19, because youngish age groups shrank less than the entire Broadway pie, which is still missing a slice or two.Continue Reading
BEHIND THE BIG PROFITS AT ‘LITTLE SHOP’ (EXCLUSIVE)
After opening red hot in October 2019, Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre had a rough second half of 2022.
Box office sales fell short of the revival’s $180,000 to $200,000-a-week running costs in 27 of the final 31 weeks of the year. Operating losses for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s plant-based off-Broadway musical comedy, set in a Skid Row flower shop, totaled $734,000 over the seven months ended Jan. 1, 2023.
Such shortfalls can lead to closing notices. Instead, the producers distributed $1.2 million of profit to themselves, their investors and co-producers. That was on top of $1.9 million of profit paid out over the previous 15 months.Continue Reading
JUDGE REJECTS PLEA TO HALT ATG-JUJAMCYN COCKTAIL COUP
A New York judge declined to intervene in a battle for Jujamcyn Theaters’ lucrative concessions business — a win for Ambassador Theatre Group after acquiring control of the Broadway landlord.
Sweet Hospitality Group has handled drink and snack sales for Jujamcyn’s five theaters since 2010. Last month, Sweet Hospitality filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court to prevent Jujamcyn under its new regime from terminating the concessions contract. The complaint provides a window into Broadway concessions and the deal that Jujamcyn and the multinational landlord and producer Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) announced in February “to combine operations.”Continue Reading
‘MERRILY’ TICKETS ROLL UP TO $899
The producers of Merrily We Roll Along have raised the revival’s top ticket price to $899 — the most expensive seat on Broadway so far this season.
The $899 tickets, which include a $50 fee for buying online, are for some orchestra and mezzanine seats in the Hudson Theatre for a handful of weekend performances in December. In this era of “dynamic pricing,” the move reflects strong demand heading into the holidays.Continue Reading
INSIDE BROADWAY’S $1 MILLION NUT CASES
Water for Elephants, the circus-themed new musical, will be under pressure to make a big splash when it arrives on Broadway.
Scheduled to open March 21, 2024, at the Imperial Theatre, it will need to sell at least $960,000 of tickets each week to cover operating expenses, according to an internal budget prepared over the summer and reviewed by Broadway Journal. (The sales here refer to “gross gross,” the weekly figure that the trade association the Broadway League makes public, which includes credit card commissions and other fees the production doesn’t keep.)
Joining the million dollar club at the Broadway box office used to be a matter of prestige. Today, it’s often a requirement for a show’s survival.Continue Reading
SHUBERT-PRODUCED ‘SOME LIKE IT HOT’ TO CLOSE
The Broadway musical comedy Some Like it Hot will close on Dec. 30, just over a year after the $19.5 million show opened. Producers emailed a closing notice tonight.
The lavish adaptation of the 1959 Billy Wilder movie was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won four, including for lead actor J. Harrison Ghee and Casey Nicholaw’s choreography. But Hot is burdened with formidable running costs — it needs to sell at least $900,000 of tickets a week to pay its bills (that’s the published gross, or “gross gross”), according to a 2021 recoupment chart reviewed by Broadway Journal. It met that threshold in just 14 of its 47 weeks at the Shubert Theatre. Continue Reading
‘CABARET,’ AT $24 MILLION, IS BROADWAY’S COSTLIEST REVIVAL (EXCLUSIVE)
Investing in Cabaret at the August Wilson Theatre this spring might seem like a safe bet, after the success of the Kander & Ebb classic in London and earlier productions in New York.
That’s until you see the price tag: $24.25 million, a record for a Broadway revival.Continue Reading
SOLO SHOWS DELIVER AS ASPIRING BLOCKBUSTERS STRUGGLE
Capitalized for $22 million, the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical Here Lies Love dramatizes the rise and fall of the Marcos regime, in a Broadway theater repurposed as a discotheque.
Last week, it was outgrossed by $35,000 by a little-known comic on an open stage with three stools. Just for Us, Alex Edelman’s monologue about antisemitism and identity that ended its run on Saturday, was capitalized for $2.25 million.
In an era of mammoth Broadway budgets and huge losses, one-person shows have been a relative safe haven for investors. Prima Facie, James Bierman’s $4 million production of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play starring Jodie Comer, is the only show from 2022-23 to announce that it recouped.Continue Reading
