Broadway Journal

WILL A NEW ‘SWEENEY TODD’ MAKE ITS INVESTORS A KILLING? (EXCLUSIVE)

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Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller is raising as much as $14.5 million to revive Sweeney Todd on Broadway this spring, a test of whether a big-budget Stephen Sondheim revival can succeed in the post-Sondheim era.

Josh Groban (The Great Comet) will play the vengeful barber and Annaleigh Ashford (Sunday in the Park with George) will play the creative pie maker Mrs. Lovett, according to an operating agreement distributed to investors and reviewed by Broadway Journal. The musical, with a book by Hugh Wheeler, will be staged by Hamilton director Thomas Kail with a full orchestra playing the score, a person familiar with the revival said. (Two prior Broadway revivals, while critically acclaimed, were comparatively small-scale productions.)Continue Reading

‘WAITRESS’ SCORES $10 MILLION TIP FROM FEDS

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Broadway is usually a risky business — but the remount of Waitress  looks like an excellent bet.

Pop star Sara Bareilles, who wrote the musical’s acclaimed score, will return to the lead role for the first six weeks of the four-month engagement, scheduled to begin Sept. 2 at the Barrymore Theatre. And the U.S. Small Business Administration has awarded the production $10 million as part of its disaster relief program for the live entertainment industry.Continue Reading

‘HAMILTON’ PITCHES GROUP SALES AS BOX OFFICE SOFTENS

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EXCLUSIVE: For the first time in more than three years, Broadway’s biggest blockbuster is opening its doors to bus tours, schools from out of town and other groups.

Beginning on Monday, Hamilton  offers group sales for performances from Jan. 7 to June 4, 2020, according to a memo the production sent to group sales agents that was obtained by Broadway Journal.

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TOOTSIE’S INSIDER ADVANTAGE AT THE TONY AWARDS

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Santino Fontana & Andy Grotelueschen

EXCLUSIVE: In competitive Tony Awards contests, can producers who vote for their own shows have an outsized impact? Apparently.

I obtained a list of voters in the 2017-18 season — which I’m told is largely current — and cross-referenced it with names above the title of this year’s Best Musical nominees.

I counted 17 Tootsie  producers and co-producers who were eligible to vote, 16 on Ain’t Too Proud,  12 on Hadestown  and nine on The Prom.  With just 831 voters, those margins aren’t negligible. Continue Reading

KITT & YORKEY ON NAVIGATING DISNEY & BROADWAY

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Pulitzer Prize-winning collaborators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey have a new musical that airs tonight on the Disney Channel.

They say their adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel Freaky Friday, the mother-daughter body swapping comedy, isn’t so different from Next to Normal, their acclaimed rock musical that explores mental illness. Both pieces seek to convey emotional truths.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

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