ALMOST FAMOUS closing on January 8- Page 2

[LuPita2]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 7:19pm

quizking101 said: "I guess this frees up Casey Likes for BACK TO THE FUTURE"

I think of him every time I hear the cast recording. I think he would be ideal for Marty. 

 

[Voter]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 7:20pm

Honestly, I just wish they'd use Solea for Moulin Rouge as Satine.

 

Or maybe somewhere in Once Upon A One More Time. Idk, but she has too much talent to waste.

[HenryTDobson]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 7:21pm

This isn't surprising but still... ouch. It feels like no shows can hold on anymore. 

[BdwyFan]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 7:26pm

I think Some Like It Hot will make it to the TONYS. And could easily win. I really do think so! 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 7:29pm

This show could/should have run at least 9 months. A shame. Far worse shows have played longer. But that’s showbiz…

Updated On: 12/19/22 at 07:29 PM

[Jarethan]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 9:07pm

amiyagi said: "No guarantee it would've done better, but is anyone else surprised at the number of musicals that have opened in the fall instead of spring? Almost Famous, SLIH, Akimbo, & Juliet, and Beautiful Noise. Five new musicals opening in the fall vs four in the spring (Shucked, Cinderella, NY NY, Dancin) isn't what we normally see. Usually the spring has more.

I think & Juliet will make it to the Tonys but it's not outside the realm of possibility that the rest don't.

It will be interesting to see if the new musicals opening in the spring have more success."

Dancin' is a revival.  I do think that, with NYNY, Bad Cinderella, Camelot and Sweeney opening in the Spring, there will be a lot of options for ticket purchasers; and with Groban in the lead, Sweeney is going to have a bigger advance than any of the new musicals, unless NYNY casting announcements include some star names, as once rumored.

Two other thoughts:

1.   I also hope this sets the path for Casey Likes to be chosen to play Marty McFly.   He has the talent and charm to excel in that role.

2.  I actually laud the producers for not running at a loss for months before deciding to close.   Why lose more money.  It is not like this show was ever going to be a candidate for Tony awards.  Kimberly, SLIH and &Juliet are all viable candidates based on their reviews, if not their box office (Kimberly, SLIH).  Smart, if sad, move.

Updated On: 12/25/22 at 09:07 PM

[Dan6]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 9:54pm

Well damn, I had tickets for this on 1/15 as the last show of my now-fully-booked NY trip.  Wish I had made it the first. 

[PipingHotPiccolo]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 9:56pm

theres alot of looking through rose-colored glasses here.

Its perfectly normal for shows to open/close in relatively quick fashion when the reviews are meh and theres no star attached. hell, even when the reviews are good it isnt surprising. COVID changed the makeup of the theater audience and the amount of time many theater-going suburban NYers spend in the city (and even how many city-dwellers commute every day into/through midtown), so im not discounting that there is a shift that bway producers seem unable to capture.

but does anyone remember Bright Star? American Psycho? Disaster? Tuck Everlasting? In Transit? Motown the Musical? Thats just one year on Bway, full of flops or weak runs. Even a "success" that year closed almost immediately after the star celeb left the show (Natasha).

I think we have seen some rather spectacular fails (I still can't get over how inept the KPop marketing was), and its clear the thirst for Traditional Theater Events (a well reviewed Death of a Salesman) is not what it was. But a show like Almost Famous-- would be MORE surprising if it was a runaway hit.

[David10086]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 10:22pm

Shocking, I tell you! 

[GoldenGiggery]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 10:51pm

I didn’t even blink when this was announced. At no point did this show have a strong audience or showing. Did it ever pull in more than 85% capacity other than opening weekend? 
 

Why Cameron Crowe thought 22 years after this movie’s release, would be a good time to make a stage musical out of it is beyond me. This should have been made in the mid-late 00’s when the Boomers would’ve eaten this up and dominated the Broadway ticket buying public.

Almost Famous is a cult classic, not a phenomenon property, and unlike a Kid’s movie (Lion King, Aladdin) most adults don’t want to pay to see a stage remake of a movie they could see on streaming for a fraction of the cost. It was unfortunately just supremely average. Not good, not awful, just somewhere in the middle. 
 

Best of luck to Solea on her next venture though, she was the glue that kept the show going even this long. 

[jkcohen626]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 11:03pm

Totally agree with PipingHotPiccolo that it's not unusual for shows to close quickly at all. 

I will say that this show was doing much better than the other shows that have closed this fall and some of them that are closing in January, so that is slightly concerning. But I'm guessing it just has to do with a poor advance and concern over the winter. 

I do also wonder if this is prepping for a tour. Plenty of mediocre shows have done quite well on tour and this show feels very built for a touring audience to me. Maybe without it on Broadway, they can use the cash they have to prep for the tour and recycle the costumes, props, and some of the sets. Maybe they even bring some of the ensemble and supporting cast over (I'm assuming the principles would rather move on) and save themselves a full audition process.

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 11:06pm

I’d put the closing decision down to the smarts of Michael Cassel. 
So many others will keep throwing money out the window but this man actually has a brain. 

Updated On: 12/19/22 at 11:06 PM

[DiscoCrows]

Posted: 12/19/22 at 11:25pm

I actually laud the producers for not running at a loss for months before deciding to close. Why lose more money. It is not like this show was ever going to be a candidate for Tony awards. Kimberly, SLIH and &Juliet are all viable candidates based on their reviews, if not their box office (Kimberly, SLIH). Smart, if sad, move.

Yes, but also you say it as though producers don’t realize they are hemorrhaging money. Like… if someone wants to be an angel and dump however many millions extra to keep a show afloat they are undyingly passionate about… then why not? It’s not exactly sustainable, sure, but it also keeps people employed and keeps audiences enjoying shows like The Prom and Head Over Heels (usually at a very discounted rate) they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see on Broadway.

Like why are we talking about it as though this is a fiscally sustainable business model & industry to begin with? Because, in my professional opinion, it’s not — unless you’re the top 20% recoupment party of course. Folks always say you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. And if passionate, multi-million net worth investors are okay taking some (even if the majority) of the blunt of that … who am I to complain that a show stays open six months longer than it would’ve otherwise been able to?

Realize that things aren’t always through & through that simple, but just my two cents.

[Jarethan]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 12:38am

DiscoCrows said: "I actually laud the producers for not running at a loss for months before deciding to close. Why lose more money. It is not like this show was ever going to be a candidate for Tony awards. Kimberly, SLIH and &Juliet are all viable candidates based on their reviews, if not their box office (Kimberly, SLIH). Smart, if sad, move.

Yes, but also you say it as though producers don’t realize they are hemorrhaging money. Like… if someone wants to be an angel and dump however many millions extra to keep a show afloat they are undyingly passionate about… then why not? It’s not exactly sustainable, sure, but it also keeps people employed and keeps audiences enjoying shows like The Prom and Head Over Heels (usually at averydiscounted rate) they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see on Broadway.

Like why are we talking about it as though this is a fiscally sustainable business model & industry to begin with? Because, in my professional opinion, it’s not — unless you’re the top 20% recoupment party of course. Folks always say you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. And if passionate, multi-million net worth investors are okay taking some (even if the majority) of the blunt of that … who am I to complain that a show stays open six months longer than it would’ve otherwise been able to?

Realize that things aren’t always through & through that simple, but just my two cents."

Good points, but why lose more money on a lost cause.  I modestly enjoyed the show, but I ultimately put it in the category “if you didn’t see it, you didn’t miss much’ and ‘the movie is better, so why pay a lot of money for second best.’

Re the argument about keeping people employed, Broadway is not a charity.  Why should investors lose money to keep mediocre musicals running?  Historically, badly reviewed and attended shows closed quickly.  It is only in recent times (did it start with Honeymoon in  Vegas?) that people have put good money after bad to extend lives of shows that were never going to catch on.  In the case of AF, I would guess that they have not been losing money every week (I am guessing) but January is around the corner and the producers no doubt saw that it was going to die, so why prolong the suffering?

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 12:40am

BorisTomashevsky said: "I’d put the closing decision down to the smarts of Michael Cassel.
So many others will keep throwing money out the window but this man actually has a brain."

Lia Vollack and their general managers are smart people, too.

The writing was on the wall. No doubt their grosses are awful for the winter and don't have the money to sustain a run through to the spring, when getting nominated for Tonys might be slim AND might not yield great results. A longer run in New York would basically be a loss leader for the road...but it's still not out of the question that this could still do a non-equity tour. NETworks already has dibs on a tour.

[Zeppie2022]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 9:01am

I really liked the movie but never thought this show had a chance to be long running show. The target audience is people who like classic rock of the 1970's and may actually still read "Rolling Stone" magazine. That is not enough to draw people to buy tickets and keep the show running for months. Very sad to see another show close and people out of work.

[ACL2006]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 9:13am

If a show is struggling now it would only be worse come January when almost all shows see a drop in grosses and attendance. It would simply that much more difficult to keep the show afloat in the winter when it would be losing more money.

[binau]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 10:37am

Broadway economics are just so tough. The idea (well, reality really) that a show is 'struggling' if it is selling almost all seats at >$100 USD a seat is crazy! That is a lot of money and time people have given to this show, and it's just not enough. I think all the show needed was a name to lift it up a bit higher, it's not like there was 0 interest from the public.

I feel for everyone involved in the show and the general frustration that they/we all probably feel RE: how hard it is to make it on Broadway. I personally am not concerned about the quality of Broadway shows, just the economic viability of them. 

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 12:30pm

I think the main thing that's been surprising me about the recent closing announcements has been how short of a runway these shows have after announcing closing.  Almost Famous at least gave 3 weeks, but Ain't No Mo' was only 2 and KPOP was only 1.  I feel like in the past we'd usually have at least 4 weeks, so is it because producers have been really pushing the shows until they're out of money to announce closing?  (Somewhat related, I was also surprised Stomp only had a month left when they announced as well, though I suppose it's not on the same model as a Broadway show.)

[bdn223]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 12:37pm

binau said: "Broadway economics are just so tough. The idea (well, reality really) that a show is 'struggling' if it is selling almost all seats at >$100 USD a seat is crazy! That is a lot of money and time people have given to this show, and it's just not enough. I think all the show needed was a name to lift it up a bit higher, it's not like there was 0 interest from the public.

I feel for everyone involved in the show and the general frustration that they/we all probably feel RE: how hard it is to make it on Broadway. I personally am not concerned about the quality of Broadway shows, just the economic viability of them."

I do wonder how much covid protocol costs have increased operating costs and how much that contributed. As pre-pandemic I would of guessed a show like Almost Famous would cost maybe $750K a week to run at the top end. as its by no means a large production. Post opening its averaged $737K a week and has be slowly building an audience, I know winter is a brutal, but if sales were so bad they knew they were going to close in January either way I would of expected the closure announcement in at least a week ago in hopes of driving more sales during the holiday period. 

Its honestly crazy to think that post pandemic its the expectation that any new musical will bring in at least $1M a week. Add to that pre-pandemic, shows like Kimberly Akimbo and A Strange Loop bringing in over $500K a week would be seen a possible sleepers hits and now their is constant speculation as to whether or not they are actually making money. If nearly every new musical financed in such a way it has to bring in at least $1M a week to break even, when less then 3 years ago only maybe 2 or 3 shows in the history of Broadway had such high running costs and most were in the $600K-$800K range, the model is clearly broken.

[Jarethan]

Posted: 12/20/22 at 12:46pm

chrishuyen said: "I think the main thing that's been surprising me about the recent closing announcements has been how short of a runway these shows have after announcing closing. Almost Famous at least gave 3 weeks, but Ain't No Mo' was only 2 and KPOP was only 1. I feel like in the past we'd usually have at least 4 weeks, so is it because producers have been really pushing the shows until they're out of money to announce closing? (Somewhat related, I was also surprised Stomp only had a month left when they announced as well, though I suppose it's not on the same model as a Broadway show.)"

This is relatively recently.  Shows used to close regularly in the Saturday after opening if they got mediocre to bad reviews.  Admittedly decades ago, I saw many big budget musicals that closed within a week or two of opening, and not all of them got bad reviews.  I guess the producers could see that sales were not picking up and decided to cut their losses.  Re giving lots of notice, in most cases that still means sustaining additional losses; business may pick up on some, but they are still losing money.

[AntV]

Posted: 12/24/22 at 1:10pm

Is there a discount code for this? Wanting to get affordable tickets for the final performance if possible.

I checked broadwaybox, playbill and theatermania, they don't have one.

Updated On: 12/24/22 at 01:10 PM

[Intotheblue]

Posted: 12/27/22 at 1:55am

Saw this tonight. Was really rooting for this show and wanted to love it. Maybe it didn’t help that understudies were on for Penny and Russell, but I found everything about it to be mediocre. And forced. I didn’t care for any of the characters whatsoever. If felt like a regional production of a Broadway show from years ago. Really disappointed.  

Updated On: 12/27/22 at 01:55 AM

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 1/5/23 at 12:20pm

Anyone attending the final performance on Sunday?

[AntV]

Posted: 1/8/23 at 7:44pm

It was a nice final performance today. Some extra cheering after some songs and moments but nothing crazy. A little extra rocking out during bows and then Cameron Crowe and Tom Kitt joined the cast after the bows.