Broadway Grosses: Week Ending 12/24/17- Page 2

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 10:42am

grumpyoptimist said: "ethan231h said: "why the dip for waitress...I know they performed 1 less show but I doubt thats why.."

Wasn't one of their perfs on Christmas Day? For a show hovering at or above 100% for a couple months, I wonder if that number of people aren't willing to go on Christmas itself (so you get a solid number, but not spectacular, knocking down your average). Just a thought..."

Christmas Day would not be accounted for in this report, since it was Monday and the gross reports go from Monday to Sunday.

That being said, for both Waitress and Once on This Island this is a case where the potential gross percentage is a number to look at and take into consideration. Yes, Waitress took a dip, but pulling in 95% of your gross potential is nothing that the producers need to worry about. As for Once on This Island, pulling in 85% of your gross potential is again a pretty good sign, as it would take some extraordinarily bad producing to put up a show that would have a weekly break-even point that high.

[chernjam]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 10:42am

Princeton2 said: "chernjam said: "Has anyone discussed what went wrong with the Miss Saigon revival? The way they hyped it after the London run, I really would never have predicted in their closing weeks, Cats would be grossing over a million and Saigon would be in the 600's"


It's really not that surprising. The London production wasn't as successful as people (Inc Cameron) makeout.They were expecting to run years and it started to slow down in it's first year. Probably not helped by them announcing a huge advance and saying it had paid back it's investment early, when the advance and paying back investment aren't the same thing. Makes good pr though

I also suspect, although announced as a limited run, they hoped it would extend on Broadway"

Had this been produced by someone other than Cameron, I doubt it would've lasted this long with grosses over the summer dipping as low as they did

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 11:53am

Pauly3 said: The (increased) gross also reflects only 7 performances. "Looking good" may be a stretch in the big picture (based on known and unknown info), but the related comment was a long way from wholly unreasonable (based on known and unknowninfo)."

You can't view things in the abstract. The show is losing money consistently, and it's not reasonable to use the word "good" in a discussion of its finances. As rehearsed in an earlier thread, the avg price metric is especially damning esp in a small house.

 

[leighmiserables]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 11:56am

HogansHero said: "The show is losing money consistently..."

Not disagreeing, but do we know this for a fact? I feel like it's impossible to say so if we don't have an approximation of its weekly running costs. 

 

[JustAnotherNewYorker]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 12:17pm

leighmiserables said: "HogansHero said: "The show is losing money consistently..."

Not disagreeing, but do we know this for a fact? I feel like it's impossible to say so if we don't have an approximation of its weekly running costs.

"

Well I did suggest to the producer that they replace the billy goat with a nanny goat to save some cash

(kidding) 

[Daddy Warbucks]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 12:54pm

HogansHero said: "barcelona20 said: "OOTI looking good."

not if you are referring to the grosses. The show itself, sure.”

Aww man, HogansHero’s roommate is back to posting on his account.  Tell the real Hogan to come back.  :)

Ladies and Gentleman, gross means very little. It is heavily influenced by the size of the theatre.  The better number is gross % potential.  And at 86% the show is moving in the right direction, though I’m sure producers would have loved to seen 100% the week leading up to Christmas.  So the OP probably had it right to call it good, but not great.  Compare the 86% to all the other shows to see where it stacks up.  

 

[Jarethan]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 2:51pm

raddersons said: "Miss Saigon may have had some revolutionarydesign and performancesyears ago,but content-wise it was never an award winner. In today's climate it is melodramatic and offensive (in my opinion). Oddly enough, one of the most "meh" plays this season for me (M Butterfly) did an amazing jobat dissecting why Miss Saigon is so problematic.It also got a bad Times review, and some lukewarmother reviews... which can be killer. I'd like to think audiences got more critical.

That being said, I'm a liberal NYCtheater fanatic and I care about these things. Do mid-western tourists?"

This is probably going to sound silly, given that the original production ran for 4,000+ performances; but, I don't think it ever hit the emotional chord with audiences en masse that Les Mis did.  It didn't desperately need to be revived, particularly when the recent Les Mis revivalS were not particularly successful.  I don't know if either made back its investment, although I would imagine it would be pretty safe to bet that the first did not.

When the revival was announced, I have to admit to thinking two things: (1) that it was too soon; and (2) that they needed a revisal that did not require huge grosses (which it clearly did not get) in a huge theatre to be successful.

I have always loved Miss Saigon, but I don't think it is as loved as the 4,000 original run suggested, something I clearly not prove.  Other factors that were or were not previously mentioned seemed valid to me: (1) no one outside of the posters on this board have ever heard of anyone in the cast; while that may have been true the first time, the publicity surrounding Jonathan Price's hiring was a blessing from heaven; (2) it is a downer and people are already pretty down right now...who needs to be reminded of oppression when we have an oppressor 'hopeful' in the White House; (3) the original success of Les Mis, coupled with Miss Saigon's  huge success in London, made record numbers of people buy tickets in advance...that momentum was never going to be there this time; (4) there was a lot of competition for filling the seats...do I see a too soon revival with a cast I have never heard of or do I see something new (and even most of those new shows couldn't fill the seats; (5) tourists did not need to travel to NYC to see tired old Miss Saigon.

I also felt that the revival of Cats was ill-conceived.  It was just too soon for a show that a lot of people hated the first time around, despite its phenomenal success.  I suspect it is almost impossible to duplicate a success that was pretty incomprehensible in the first place.

Updated On: 12/28/17 at 02:51 PM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 2:54pm

Warbucks2 said: "Aww man, HogansHero’s roommate is back to posting on his account. Tell the real Hogan to come back. :)

Ladies and Gentleman, gross means very little. It is heavily influenced by the size of the theatre. The better number is gross % potential. And at 86% the show is moving in the right direction, though I’m sure producers would have loved to seen 100% the week leading up to Christmas. So the OP probably had it right to call it good, but not great. Compare the 86% to all the other shows to see where it stacks up. "

Sorry to disappoint but it's me. The percentages mean nothing because you can't pay bills with them. And neither does the size of the house unless you are lucky enough to be selling out and leaving willing buyers ticketless. I've never heard of a show that magically sells more tickets because it is in a bigger house in any other situation. (I have heard of lower grosses in a bigger house because the relative demand was lower.) It's the gross and the nut that matter.

In answer to the other post, I don't know the nut but I'd venture to say there is not much left over, even at the high water mark. And these holiday weeks are not much of a bellweather for the winter when you are not sold out and are selling at a substantial discount. Sorry again but there is no way this is good news.

[raddersons]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 4:42pm

Why do you think OOTI is so costly to run every week? The cast isn't huge. The tech isn't huge. The pit isn't huge. I wouldn't be surprised if running costs were around ~350/400k, which is around 50% gross potential on a typical 8-show week. 

[Miles2Go2]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 5:09pm

HogansHero said: "Warbucks2 said: "Aww man, HogansHero’s roommate is back to posting on his account. Tell the real Hogan to come back. :)

Ladies and Gentleman, gross means very little. It is heavily influenced by the size of the theatre. The better number is gross % potential. And at 86% the show is moving in the right direction, though I’m sure producers would have loved to seen 100% the week leading up to Christmas. So the OP probably had it right to call it good, but not great. Compare the 86% to all the other shows to see where it stacks up. "

Sorry to disappoint but it's me. The percentages mean nothing because you can't pay bills with them. And neither does the size of the house unless you are lucky enough to be selling out and leaving willing buyers ticketless. I've never heard of a show that magically sells more tickets because it is in a bigger house in any other situation. (I have heard of lower grosses in a bigger house because the relative demand was lower.) It's the gross and the nut that matter.

In answer to the other post, I don't know the nut but I'd venture to say there is not much left over, even at the high water mark. And these holiday weeks are not much of a bellweather for the winter when you are not sold out and are selling at a substantial discount. Sorry again but there is no way this isgood news."

HogansHero, I think we can all agree that we want this show to succeed. What percentages/grosses would it take in January for you to deem that this show might be beginning to find its financial legs? 

[leighmiserables]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 5:14pm

raddersons said: "Why do you think OOTI is so costly to run every week? The cast isn't huge. The tech isn't huge. The pit isn't huge. I wouldn't be surprised if running costs were around ~350/400k, which is around 50% gross potential on a typical 8-show week."

^I've had the same thoughts.

Hogan, while I completely agree with you that it's the actual gross and not the percentage that matters, when you're in a house that maxes out at 800k, I can't imagine the producers would green-light any production with a nut more than half of that. It just really doesn't make sense from a business standpoint, so I'm hesitant to say it's a sinking ship unless we know for a fact (or at least close to a fact) that the running costs are much higher than 400-450k. 

I saw the show once, enjoyed it, and that was enough for me. Whether it stays or goes is really immaterial to me. I just find it strange that some people are willing to chime the death bell without any factual basis — even if it is possible that it's in the red, from what we know it's just as possible it's in the black. 

 

Updated On: 12/28/17 at 05:14 PM

[Daddy Warbucks]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 5:15pm

HogansHero said:  “It's the gross and the nut that matter.

Your evil twin originally said the show isn’t doing well if you look at the grosses.  The real Hogan (whom I respect immensely) came back to correct him that it’s grosses AND the nut.  And it sounds like you don’t know the nut (neither do I), so perhaps hard to say for sure whether the show is not doing well.  

But having seen budgets for dozens and dozens of recent shows (I get approached frequently to invest - maybe because my name is Daddy Warbucks), there’s a pattern.  Shows with high nuts are most often matched to big theatres that can bring in a high enough potential gross to recoup in a year if the show played on average at ~75% gross potential.  That must be a magic number that investors can stomach.  Shows playing in smaller theatres virtually always have a significantly smaller nut compared to their large theatre counterparts. So we can probably assume correctly this has a smaller than average nut.  

This is why I’m frequently harping on % of gross potential, because big theatre or small theatre, it is usually the magic number that best correlated with financial success, not pure gross.  But I do agree with good Hogan that if we knew the nut, then gross minus nut would be an even better metric.  

 

 

[chernjam]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 6:13pm

Leighmiserables - how much the weekly cost is, is always the mystery... From what I've read on line, the most conservative musical is $450 K - with the most average being in the 600K and north area (two articles that I found that sound like they have some idea on these things:

http://newmusicaltheatre.com/greenroom/2016/02/broadway-budgets-101-breaking-down-the-weekly-budget/

http://erinrebeccaroberts.com/blog/2015/01/09/the-inner-workings-of-broadway-production-budgets 

[JustAnotherNewYorker]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 6:33pm

I was going to post a similar explanation to that posted by Daddy Warbucks (that damned war profiteer), but he beat me to it (and with more eloquence). I will note, however, that the choice of theater depends on so many factors, and the success of producers are so varied, that it's just a guess. The correlation falls well short of 1.

Updated On: 12/28/17 at 06:33 PM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 7:09pm

The nuts being mentioned here are not realistic. I would guess low 500s. In answer to the question, I think a January that's 10-20% above December would be cause for hope. (And remember that the published gross is roughly 90% of the portion available to the production.) Even in the most optimistic posture, let's say you'd need to sustain the current grosses through the winter. Being able to would be a big surprise to me. 

In order to create some rule of thumb based on theatre size-to-nut, you'd need to assume that producers are rational creatures, and history tells us otherwise. Especially in this case.

I stand by what I said. 

 

Updated On: 12/28/17 at 07:09 PM

[blaxx]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 8:24pm

OOTI and SpongeBob are certainly in the red or very close. 

It's going to cost the producers a lot of money to keep them open until nominations; both shows are in for a very sad ride of huge losses. If they really depended so much on awards, they should have opened later.

Hope Carousel doesn't kick OOTI's ass too much, but I doubt it will look good for the islanders. 

[Mike66]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 9:24pm

Warbucks2 said:
Shows with high nuts are most often matchedto big theatresthat can bring in a high enough potential gross to recoup in a year if the showplayed on average at ~75% gross potential. That must be a magic number that investors can stomach. Shows playing in smaller theatres virtuallyalways have a significantly smaller nut compared to their large theatre counterparts. So we can probably assume correctly this has a smaller than averagenut.

"

^ This is good stuff.  

BUT -- shouldn't the same hold for a small venue -- that around 75% gross potential is the necessary box office to justify the risks?  Of course, the actual dollars will be very different from the Rodgers to Circle in the Square  (which I thought was your point) -- but the percentages should remain (generally) the same-- and the investors just put in less and get out less but take on the same "type" of risk -- no?

 

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 10:14pm

Mike66 said: "Warbucks2 said:
Shows with high nuts are most often matchedto big theatresthat can bring in a high enough potential gross to recoup in a year if the showplayed on average at ~75% gross potential. That must be a magic number that investors can stomach. Shows playing in smaller theatres virtuallyalways have a significantly smaller nut compared to their large theatre counterparts. So we can probably assume correctly this has a smaller than averagenut.

"

^ This is good stuff.

BUT -- shouldn't the same hold for a small venue -- that around 75% gross potential is the necessary box office to justify the risks? Of course, the actual dollars will be very different from the Rodgers to Circle in the Square (which I thought was your point) -- but the percentages should remain (generally) the same-- and the investors just put in less and get out less but take on the same "type" of risk -- no?

"

Sorry guys but it just doesn't work this way. And OOTI is a perfect example of why it can't. It's at 85% this week, and that's either barely enough or, more likely, not enough. Its next door neighbor could crash by half and it would still be heavily profitable. These percentages are non-sequiturs: there are just way too many variables for them to make sense. The reason people produce shows like this is because they think they have a hit on their hands, that can fill up and sell premium. You'll notice the absence of any of any successful producers or top tier investors above the title. There's a reason for that. 

[ScottK]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 10:58pm

If grosses at its neighbor would crash by HALF--the (neighbor's) show would most definitely NOT be HEAVILY profitable--actually, it would be BARELY profitable

[BJR]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 11:03pm

Wait, capacity and gross potential are different things. Wasn't Warbucks talking about gross potential mattering more than gross numbers themselves?

[BJR]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 11:03pm

DOUBLE POST

Updated On: 12/29/17 at 11:03 PM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 11:21pm

ScottK said: "If grosses at its neighbor would crash by HALF--the (neighbor's) show would most definitely NOT be HEAVILY profitable--actually, it would be BARELY profitable"

one person's heavy is another person's bare I guess. A 6 figure profit is not bare to most people. Not even rich people.

[ScottK]

Posted: 12/28/17 at 11:25pm

very true!--but it would be a LOW six figure profit

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/29/17 at 12:42am

ScottK said: "very true!--but it would bea LOW six figure profit"

sure. My point is made regardless, and I don't think anybody (well, some here, no doubt) would be asking why it hadn't closed yet if it were making $100,000.01 a week (that's over $5 mil a year by the way )

[GreenGables]

Posted: 12/29/17 at 9:22am

HogansHero said: "Mike66 said: "Warbucks2 said:
Shows with high nuts are most often matchedto big theatresthat can bring in a high enough potential gross to recoup in a year if the showplayed on average at ~75% gross potential. That must be a magic number that investors can stomach. Shows playing in smaller theatres virtuallyalways have a significantly smaller nut compared to their large theatre counterparts. So we can probably assume correctly this has a smaller than averagenut.

"

^ This is good stuff.

BUT -- shouldn't the same hold for a small venue -- that around 75% gross potential is the necessary box office to justify the risks? Of course, the actual dollars will be very different from the Rodgers to Circle in the Square (which I thought was your point) -- but the percentages should remain (generally) the same-- and the investors just put in less and get out less but take on the same "type" of risk -- no?

"

Sorry guys but it just doesn't work this way. And OOTI is a perfect example of why it can't. It's at 85% this week, and that's either barely enough or, more likely, not enough. Its next door neighbor could crash by half and it would still be heavily profitable. These percentages are non-sequiturs: there are just way too many variables for them to make sense. The reason people produce shows like this is because they think they have a hit on their hands, that can fill up and sell premium. You'll notice the absence of any of any successful producers or top tier investors above the title. There's a reason for that."

@Hogan - i generally agree with you re Grosses more than %, but I'm thinking in general terms that most recoupment charts (which I know always have a little bit of Fancy Accounting, if you catch my drift) try to floor a breakeven in the 60s-low 70s (with the exception of star driven limited runs, which can be in the 90s).  I'm assuming the producers for OOTI would have a similar floor, which would put the breakeven in the ~500k range ($450k if they're really cutting corners) for an 8 show week.  So while that's not exactly gangbusters business, I don't see them in any immediate danger of closing if they can keep the grosses in that 85% range for a 9 show week this week and stay at least in 70% territory going forward.

Second thought - would Circle in the Square have lower union costs because of its size?  Similar to the way non-profit houses have negotiated lower costs.