Broadway Grosses: Week Ending 12/26

Click below to access all the grosses from all the shows for the week ending 12/26/2010 in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Also, you will find information on each show's historical grosses, cumulative grosses and other statistics on how each show stacked up this week and in the past.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/grosses.cfm

How can Wicked be at 137.45% of its gross potential? Wouldn't the potential gross of $1,566,495 include all seats set aside for premium prices?

Ouch for LA CAGE and WOMEN ON THE VERGE as well.

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I'm hoping that "Lombardi" will still be around by mid-March. Keeping my fingers crossed. If not that, I'm debating whether to get a ticket for "Anything Goes". from RC in Austin, Texas

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Now I want the best for Spiderman, but I am wondering if it is only a million a week because of the lack of performances. I mean when you spread from 4 to 8 performances a week, I assume grosses would go down.

Guess the bad press aint hurting Spider Man, just under a million from 4 performances.

Are you serious? It has been losing money since peviews started, they haven't made a penny.

Of course all the problems are hurting the production and at this rate a major lawsuit or two would pretty much be the end of it all.

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Are the running costs $1mil regardless of the # of performances? I realize rent stays the same, but do they have to pay everyone for 8 shows even if there are only 4 or 5?

Re: Spiderman and their weekly gross (and correct me if I'm wrong):

As I understand it, producers consider the expenses of previews to go towards the tabulation of capitalization (the $65 million you see thrown about).

So let's say going into this past week, their capitalization sat at $65 million exactly, then they ran the week with expenses of $1.5 million and box office take of $1 million, their new capitalization would sit at $65.5 million.

Not until they reach opening night does the capitalization # get locked. From there, the differences between expenses and box office take begin to either pay back investors, or begins to eat at "reserve for losses" (the $$$ that producers have built into the capitalization to make up the difference if expenses outpace receipts).

Joey,

That's not 100% accurate.

Firstly, capitalization is not tabulated per se. The capitalization is specified in the offering papers for the show. It may be a what's known as a "mini/maxi" that gives some flexibility as to how much may be raised, but it is a finite amount from the start.

What I believe you are referring to is the final production costs which can be anything up to the maximum capitalization. If it's less, the extra money is generally set aside for a reserve. If it's more, the excess will typically need to be made up by priority loans.

As for how to figure out where Spiderman stands, it's pretty impossible to state accurately without specific access to the show's accounting.

Producers do budget for *additional* expenses during previews as part of the capitalization -- rehearsals, workcalls, possible script and/or physical production changes and associated expenses -- but the basic operation of the show in previews is treated as an operating expense.

So in the Spiderman's production budget is an allowance for expenses during previews. If they've been spending an extra $500K per week for tech and adjustments (which seems like a slightly high figure to me) than it's possible they have that money in the budget. Or it's possible they've already spent whatever the maximum their capitalization is legally allowed to be, in which case they would need to cover the "extra" $500K per week with priority loans or they would have to get permission from all of the investors to amend the offering papers and raise the capitalization (which very rarely happens because it dilutes everyone's share and may have already happened once on this show, making a second time even less likely).

However, the operating costs of the show in previews are typically NOT part of the production budget. The show needs to pay for its basic weekly operating costs from the outset. I haven't looked back at the numbers but it seems to me that the show has been breaking even on that front from week to week.

To be clear, our conclusions are the same -- if the show is costing them $1.5M/week in previews and they're making only $1M, that extra $500K per week needs to be accounted for somewhere. But I just wanted to give a bit more detail on the nature of theatrical budgeting/accounting and explain that it's probably only the "extra" $500K per week that needs to be covered in the production budget.

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