Broadway Journal

FOUNDERING ‘PARADISE SQUARE’ GHOSTED GROUP SALES CHIEF, LAWSUIT SAYS

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EXCLUSIVE: Paradise Square has had a bumpy road to Eden.

Nominated for 10 Tony Awards, the second-highest total of the season, it was Broadway’s worst-selling musical in the week ending on May 8, posting just $194,000 in ticket sales. Since its first preview on March 15 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, it hasn’t come close to its weekly breakeven — $599,000, per an estimate in its 2019 operating agreement. (Comparably sized musicals usually cost more to run.)

A new lawsuit against Paradise Square Broadway LP filed in New York Supreme Court, not far from where the Civil War-era musical is set, provides a window into the Garth Drabinsky production. It’s the Canadian producer’s first show on Broadway since he was convicted in 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, of defrauding Livent Inc. shareholders of nearly half a billion dollars. Publicly-traded Livent, which Drabinsky co-founded, filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998.Continue Reading

RUDIN ANGLES TO RETAIN ‘MORMON’ PROFITS AS LAWSUITS FLOURISH (EXCLUSIVE)

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Five months after announcing that he would “step back from active participation” on his Broadway shows, producer Scott Rudin is still negotiating the terms of his exit from his biggest hit, The Book of Mormon, a person familiar with the situation told Broadway Journal.

Rudin is battling his former partners, the South Park creative team of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who with their business associate Anne Garefino are the remaining lead producers of The Book of Mormon. (London-based producer Sonia Friedman is also heavily involved in the U.K edition of the musical, which Parker and Stone wrote with composer-lyricist Bobby Lopez.) Continue Reading

‘WEST SIDE STORY,’ ‘HANGMEN’ GET SBA FUNDS TO RESUME PERFORMANCES; ‘HAMILTON’ SECURES $50 MILLION

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Ivo van Hove’s video-heavy revival of West Side Story,  which was originally produced by Scott Rudin and opened a month before Broadway was shuttered, has scored a $10 million Small Business Administration grant to reopen.

A person familiar with the production said it will imminently announce when it will resume, along with who will oversee it. Following multiple reports alleging that Rudin abused his staff, the producer has said that he’s stepping back from the entertainment business. There’d been industry speculation that the musical, which was capitalized at $16 million and received mixed reviews, would not return.  Continue Reading

‘BOOK OF MORMON’S BLACK ACTORS PUSH TO CHANGE PORTRAYAL OF AFRICANS (EXCLUSIVE)

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If and when The Book of Mormon  resumes performances on Broadway, the take-no-prisoners musical will reconsider its mission.

In a video call last summer organized by lead producer Anne Garefino, co-writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone assured Black cast members that they were eager to take a fresh look at the 10-year-old blockbuster and were open to making changes, a person familiar with the conversation said. The call came in response to a letter from the actors — both original and current cast members — outlining their concerns regarding the musical, which is about inept Mormon missionaries in a Ugandan village ravaged by AIDS and civil war.  Among other issues, the letter addresses the challenges of differentiating between racial stereotyping and satirical storytelling, especially in moments of the show when African characters are treated as “props and punchlines.”Continue Reading

SCOTT RUDIN TAGS DUSTIN HOFFMAN FOR POST-COVID ‘OUR TOWN’ REVIVAL (EXCLUSIVE)

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When the pandemic gives way to live performance, producer Scott Rudin plans to present an American classic about the gift of being alive.

Rudin is assembling cast and creatives for the first Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town  in nearly two decades, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. It’s to star Dustin Hoffman, whose last Broadway credit was The Merchant of Venice,  in 1989, the same year he won the second of his two Academy Awards, for Rain Man.  In 1984, he starred on Broadway as Willy Loman in a revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.Continue Reading

CUOMO ORDERS BROADWAY SHUTDOWN AS MAYOR PREDICTS ‘LONG BATTLE’

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Broadway will go dark for at least a month — its longest shutdown in modern times — as U.S. performing arts and professional sports screech to a halt in an attempt to limit the public health threat of the coronavirus pandemic.

With Broadway in the thick of its annual spate of openings to qualify for Tony Awards, sixteen new productions — including Six, scheduled to have opened tonight — must reset as all eligible theaters go dark. Most off-Broadway shows also close beginning tonight.Continue Reading

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