Broadway Journal

SOLO SHOWS DELIVER AS ASPIRING BLOCKBUSTERS STRUGGLE

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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

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

‘HAMILTON’-ENDOWED PUBLIC THEATER DELAYS FURLOUGHS WITH $4 MILLION OF U.S. AID

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EXCLUSIVE: The Public Theater, which has earned tens of millions of dollars launching Hamilton, received federal assistance meant to preserve jobs threatened by the pandemic.

The Public borrowed roughly $4 million through the Paycheck Protection Program, according to Shareeza Bhola,  a spokeswoman for the nonprofit. The loans, which are overseen by the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration, may be forgiven when borrowers spend at least 75 percent of the money on payroll over eight weeks.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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RIDING HIGH WITH ‘HAMILTON’ PROFITS, THEATER PLANS ‘PUBLIC STUDIOS’

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EXCLUSIVE: The Public Theater has earned tens of millions of dollars for its role developing Hamilton — and is spending as little of it as possible on two ambitious projects.

The venerable nonprofit is fundraising for a new rehearsal and audition space — dubbed Public Studios — that’s scheduled to open early next year across the street from its Astor Place headquarters. It’s also renovating the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, to be completed around 2022.Continue Reading

RECORD WEEK CAPS RECORD YEAR — WITH HIGHEST PRICES FOR LONG-RUNNING HITS (TABLE)

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Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda & director Thomas Kail/Tammy Shell

Broadway celebrated 2019 with a slew of milestones: highest-grossing week and year in history and best-attended week and year since at least 1984, according to the Broadway League.

Long-running shows such as Wicked  ($3.4 million), The Lion King  ($3.7 million) and Hamilton  ($4 million) recorded their best sales last week and charged their highest average prices, with tourists continuing to flock to Broadway’s biggest brands.

Hamilton,  whose composer-lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda, returns to the show next week for a short engagement in San Juan, Puerto Rico, became the first Broadway show to clear $4 million over eight performances.Continue Reading

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA TO PRODUCE & OCCASIONALLY STAR IN HIP-HOP SHOW

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Lin-Manuel Miranda & Tommy Kail/Tammy Shell

With a top-ticket (so far) of $119, Lin-Manuel Miranda and three co-producers are mounting an engagement early next year of Freestyle Love Supreme,  the improv hip-hop group that the Hamilton  creator has performed in since 2004.

“There is nothing like a live hip-hop show that is improvised from the first moment til the final curtain,” Miranda said in a statement. Previews begin on Jan. 30 at the tiny Greenwich House Theater. That’s three days after a run of Hamilton  is scheduled to end in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which stars Miranda in the title role.  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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