Broadway Grosses: Week Ending 9/11/2005

[Rob]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:11am

Click below to access all the grosses from all the shows for the week ending 9/11/2005 in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

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

[EverythingIsRENT]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:17am

Ouch!! September is definetely here

[ProducersFan]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:19am

Avenue Q is at 79 and Producers is at 63?! I have never seen numbers that low for those two shows. Wow... I guess you can tell when the tourists leave NY.

~Jessica

[RockabyeHamlet]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:20am

Wow.... Im speechless.... This week was the worst I've seen in awhile..

[JRTO]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:20am

Hairspray has never been at 60% in its history! OUCH! What a tough week!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:21am

Wow. What a bloodbath! Major drops all over the place:

Hairspray down 26.1 % to 60% attendance.
Sweet Charity down 25.2% to 42%.
Rent down 21% to 51%
Beauty and the Beast down 20.5% to 52.3%
Phantom down 20.5% to 73.7%.
Piazza down 18.9% to 59.9%.

Even Lion King and Mamma Mia didn't sell out.

Lennon dropped to 39.4% (so much for that "box office guy" who somebody said reported grosses up 75% -- I knew that was a crock).

All Shook Up was at 36.7% (ouch).

Fiddler hit 35.8% -- Rosie coming in may not do any good; this show may be too far gone.

Only Wicked and Spamalot were unscathed and soldout the week. September and October can be pretty bad, but these are particularly awful numbers -- the kind you usually only see in February.

Oh well, summer's officially over and the tourists are gone -- if this is any indication, it's gone be a tough couple of months until they come back in November.

Updated On: 9/13/05 at 11:21 AM

[Demitri2]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:41am

Geez! Can you imagine what the grosses for Suzanne Sommers' "Blonde In A Thunderbird" would have been this past week had she stuck with it through September?...2%? Jackie Mason was also wise to squeeze the last drop out of "Freshly Squeezed" before the post Labor Day massacre.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:45am

That's the first time I ever saw the Hairspray numbers so low.

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:49am

Piazza deserves so much better than 59.9%...at least I can say I was a part of the attendance last week. I was there on Wednesday evening and the loge was completely empty. So sad...

[cathywellerstein]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:49am

wow. baaaad week. kinda scary.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:53am

I just checked and this is the first week Hairspray EVER dipped below 70% (and it's rarely been below 80%).

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:55am

There's always a huge drop in the week after Labor Day though. Admittedly this is a big drop, but still. In the UK, September is the toughest month of the year for ticket sales, even tougher than January, believe it or not. Looks like it might be the same here.

Saw Piazza on Sunday and was a little surprised at how empty it was.

[NBC]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 11:57am

How much of this do you think might be attributed to the anniversary of 9/11? Because there was virtually nobody on the TKTS line at about 1:30 on Sunday. (I wish I had gone to see something! Just to show support. But I'd already seen four shows last week - well, two were off-Broadway.)

I've seen Mamma Mia up on TKTS before, I don't think it's selling out as much as it used to.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 12:05pm

Mamma Mia has been at 99 to 101% attendance all but three weeks since last February.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 12:05pm

Well, a show being on TKTS isn't necessarily a sign that it's doing bad business. Boy From Oz was on there from day one, I seem to recall. And I walked past the Winter Garden at 12:30pm on the sunday before Labor Day and there were two lines the length of the foyer buying tickets.

[NBC]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 12:29pm

I didn't mean to imply that Mamma Mia was in any sort of trouble. But I'd noticed it up on TKTS before. I was surprised to see it available. I imagine the half-price tickets to that show are snapped up quickly, so I guess it would still sell out.

[greatdct]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:40pm

Chitty...

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:42pm

I just keep telling myself that it's a big theatre.

I'd LIKE to say it's because of the Raul absence, but I'd so be kidding myself.

[greatdct]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:43pm

Gosh, I hope it sticks it out.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:44pm

*buys lots of tickets*

[greatdct]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:45pm

Seriously! I have a ticket to see it in a few weeks. Maybe I'll go twice then. I also have a ticket for November... if it's still around...

[Dre2387]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:48pm

I have to say this. Do you know why Wicked and Spamalot didn't lose anything this week? It's because it was the week of 9/11 and people wanted something easy and fun to watch and to get their minds off of 9/11. they wanted to have silly entertainment instead of serious stuff.

And yes, I know that Beauty and Beast isn't that serious but compared to Spamalot? It's like during the war when people went to the theatre to see shows to get their minds off the war or other problems.

So, for some people not all, you may not like Wicked or spamalot, but it does good business in times like this and that is why they are so succesful.

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 1:51pm

Wicked and Spamalot didn't lose any money this week because they are both hit shows...it has nothing to do with 9/11.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 2:01pm

It's because Wicked and Spamalot have zero walk up business at this point and don't rely on last minute sales (like the long running hits do). Both are totally soldout several months in advance -- the people who saw those shows last week probably bought their tickets last Spring sometime or even earlier.

Shows like Mamma Mia, Lion King and Avenue Q have decent advances, but rely to some extent on walk up business and last minute buys by tourists to push them to soldout status every week. There were no tourists last week, so they didn't sell out and those numbers, which are still good, mostly reflect their advances.

The other shows are in a much more precarious situation. Their advances are very low and they are TOTALLY reliant on the tourist dollar to survive. We'll see how long some of these shows can hold on.

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 9/13/05 at 2:03pm

This is a bit depressing.