A host of Broadway productions enjoyed record-breaking box-office tallies for the week ending December 29, with several shows offering a nine-performance schedule during the holiday week. Among those setting house records for the final week of 2019: A Christmas Carol, Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of The Temptations, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, West Side Story, and the 2019 Tony-winning Best Musical Hadestown.
A Christmas Carol, adapted by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus, grossed $954,054 over nine performances at the Lyceum Theatre. That figure tops the record previously held by Nick Kroll and John Mulaney's Oh, Hello, which grossed $911,602 for the week ending January 1, 2017.
Ain’t Too Proud, recently nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, once again broke the box-office record at the Imperial, taking in $1,865,017 over eight performances. The musical following The Temptations’ journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame broke its own record of $1,710,207, which was set the week of December 8.
It was also a great week at the Lunt-Fontanne, where Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which stars Adrienne Warren as the rock legend, again broke the house record with a gross of $2,276,569 for a nine-performance week. Previously, the Phyllida Lloyd- directed production broke the house record for an eight-performance week with a gross of $1,834,339 for the week ending December 1.
The return of Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story, directed by Tony Award winner Ivo van Hove, again broke the Broadway Theatre house record for a single week, with a gross of $1,807,026 for eight performances. This new record also represents an all-time box-office high in the 62 years since West Side Story debuted on Broadway. (The new Broadway revival recently pushed back its opening at the Broadway Theatre to February 20, 2020.)
And the 2019 Tony winner for Best Musical, Hadestown, broke its own house record, earning $1,693,119 for eight performances at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The show’s previous record was $1,623,020 for the week ending December 1.
Click here for an in-depth look at this week's grosses.
The highest-grossing production of the week was, once again, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Hamilton, earning $3,646,320 over eight shows. Two other productions surpassed the $3 million mark: The Lion King ($3,484,184) and Wicked ($3,217,944), which both played nine-performance weeks.
Others surpassing the $2 million mark included Aladdin ($2,462,504), Beetlejuice ($2,175,859, a house record at the Winter Garden Theatre over nine performances), Frozen ($2,186,427), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ($2,049,310), Moulin Rouge! ($2,716,892, a house record at the Al Hirschfeld over nine performances), The Illusionists ($2,003,271), The Phantom of the Opera ($2,039,104), and To Kill a Mockingbird ($2,080,918).
READ: The 10 Highest-Grossing Broadway Shows of the Decade
Adrienne Warren in the original cast of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical
