I'd be much more interested to know if anyone can hazard a guess as to how much Barry & Fran and Fred (RIP) and John have earned from this revival and its many worldwide productions. They must have earned 10s if not 100s of millions at this point, no?
I don't believe that the licensing just opened up. It has been restricted yes, but there are tons of schools who do it. Community/regional theater is still rare. There are tons of youtube videos of high school productions of Chicago where the kids do (or attempt to do) the Ann Reinking choreography, which I highly doubt is available to license.
It is a VERY hard one to get, but it's possible. Earlier this year Centerstage in Louisville put it on. I'm friends with someone on the board and she said they almost lost the rights. They did end up putting it on but it is a long and hard process for community/regional theatre. They even had to delay it until September when it was originally set to go on in July.
It all depends on the location (distance from the tour or broadway production) and the timing of your production. My local theatre company in Oregon was granted a license and we will be presenting it in April. We were very luck to get it, as the national tour was in close vicinity only a year ago.
"The case, from a legal perspective, was not complicated. The school's drama teacher, Anthony Cerrini, 24, had decided to stage "Chicago." He found some dialogue on the Internet, transcribed some of it from the 2002 movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger, and wrote some of it himself.
At the news conference, Mr. Cerrini took responsibility and said that he had never been told about the need for an application."
I really hope they got a new Director. What an idiot.