Lawrence and I have a running joke about overused headlines:
“Car Bomb Explodes In Beirut”.
“Rosie O’Donnell Goes On Unhinged Rant”
And, to that list, we can add:
“The Broadway Musical Is in Trouble”.
None of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have made a profit yet. Some still could, but several have been spectacular flameouts. The new musicals “Tammy Faye,” “Boop!” and “Smash” each cost at least $20 million to bring to the stage, and each was gone less than four months after opening. All three lost their entire investments.
Lavish revivals of much-loved classics are also fizzling. On Sunday, a revival of “Cabaret,” budgeted for up to $26 million and featuring a costly conversion of a Broadway theater into a nightclub-like setting, threw in the towel at a total loss. A $19.5 million revival of “Gypsy” that starred Audra McDonald and earned strong reviews closed last month without recouping its investment. Even a buzzy production of “Sunset Boulevard,” which won this year’s Tony for best musical revival, failed to make back the $15 million it cost to mount.
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Only three new musicals have recouped their investments since the pandemic. Two are jukebox musicals: “MJ,” which features the music of Michael Jackson, and “& Juliet,” which features the songs of the Swedish hitmaker Max Martin. The third, “Six,” reimagines the ill-fated wives of King Henry VIII as pop stars.
So “Suffs” didn’t make money? Interesting to know.
But wait!
All three got assistance from the government. “Six” and “MJ” each got $10 million from the federal government in the form of Shuttered Venue Operator Grants, designed to help the arts recover from the shutdown. And “& Juliet” benefited from a $3 million tax credit through a New York State postpandemic program. The federal program ended, and the state program, which has aided almost every Broadway show to open over the last few years, will end this fall unless it is renewed.
Why was this money not going to the Montana State University Angling Oral History Project? Or the USCSB?
Producers and general managers say that every element of making musicals has gotten more expensive in recent years: labor (paying actors and musicians and stage hands as well as the creative teams), material (the lumber and steel, as well as the technology, that go into sets), rent (to theater owners) and fees (to all kinds of vendors who work on shows).
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A decade ago, the big musical comedy “Something Rotten,” with a cast of 25, cost $14 million to capitalize; last season’s “Death Becomes Her,” another big musical comedy with a cast of 20, cost up to $31.5 million. The high capitalization costs, combined with high running costs, means shows have to run much longer to become profitable.
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One Broadway investor, James L. Walker Jr. of Atlanta, is so frustrated by the current economics that he’s litigating. After putting $50,000 into the “Cabaret” revival, he filed suit against the producers, alleging fraud. In an interview, Walker pointed out that the show has grossed nearly $90 million in ticket sales, plus whatever it made in sales of liquor, food and merchandise, and that he can’t accept that the investors who raised up to $26 million to finance the show have gotten nothing back. “How is that a good business model?” he asked.
I wish him all the luck in the world, but this sounds like “Hollywood accounting”, and I don’t think any of the suits around that have had much success.
The two this fall include “The Queen of Versailles,” based on a documentary and starring Kristin Chenoweth, and “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” a British rom-com with just two actors. Next spring’s slate has not yet taken shape, but among the new musicals circling are stage adaptations of the films “The Lost Boys” and Prince’s “Purple Rain,” of the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” and of the streaming series “Schmigadoon!,” as well as an original title, “Wanted.”
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, the musical? Maybe the problem is that Broadway is out of ideas.
And haven’t people been saying “The Broadway Musical Is in Trouble” since…1942?
This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2025 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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