Broadway Grosses Analysis: Box Office Expands as Summer Theatregoers Head to Back to the Future, Parade, Good Night, Oscar, More | Playbill

Industry News Broadway Grosses Analysis: Box Office Expands as Summer Theatregoers Head to Back to the Future, Parade, Good Night, Oscar, More

Several shows saw their highest-grossing weeks yet as 257,204 people saw a Broadway show last week.

Graphic by Vi Dang

Broadway had a good week last week, with cumulative grosses rising by just over 2% to $31,520,593 million. Average paid admission has held steady at a healthy $122.55, with 257,204 people seeing Broadway shows and filling nearly 90% of all available seats at the 30 shows running. We're likely to see a notable drop next week with CamelotLife of Pi, and Peter Pan Goes Wrong all having played their final performances July 23—but for right now, summer is looking good on the Main Stem.

Four shows—Good Night, OscarBack to the FutureJust For Us; and The Cottage—all saw their highest grosses so far, a particular achievement for Good Night, Oscar, which has been running for 16 weeks.

Parade also set a house record with its total of $1.3 million. While not the highest gross of the Jason Robert Brown musical revival's run, it is the highest the production has seen for an eight-performance week, a caveat that also applies to its house record. With the run set to complete August 6, the revival has turned out to be a surprise hit. Even now with 151 performances and 21 previews under its belt, the production has out-run the musical's 1998 original production, which ran just three months, 39 previews and 85 performances. The highest gross that run saw was $353,664, or $662,000.43 when adjusted for inflation. The current revival only failed to exceed $1 million three weeks, each prior to opening night when shows typically are comping lots of seats to critics and other members of the press. The original production was not really up against juggernauts in its season, with a Bob Fosse dance revue, the Bernadette Peters-led Annie Get Your Gun, and a revival of Death of a Salesman starring Brian Dennehy its chief competition in 1998. The current revival's greater success may be a reflection of the story's unfortunate current relevance plus the drawing power of its Tony-nominated stars, Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond.

Still in previews, Back to the Future continues to shape up as Broadway's next bonafide hit. The West End transfer started strong and has been upping the ante with each succeeding week, even while comping lots of tickets on the way to opening night. Once reviews drop August 3 and everyone at the Winter Garden is paying, we could easily see a new contender for top-five status. Lucky for the production and Broadway, the Winter Garden, which hosts the screen-to-stage musical, is one of the larger Broadway houses. The show ranked eighth in terms of grosses, but fifth in terms of the amount of people who actually saw it—11,601 to be exact. That places the new musical in the ranks of such family favorite stalwarts as WickedAladdinThe Lion King, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Take a look at the full report here.

The $1 Million Club (shows that earned $1 million or more at the box office):

(12 of 30 currently running productions)


The 90s Club
(shows that played to 90% or higher of their seats filled over the entire week):

(19 of 33 currently running productions)

 
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