Grosses/Nut

[evic]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 9:10am

Was curious with a show's nut- are advertising costs figured in to the break even of a show or does that change on a week to week basis. e.g.- Spring Awakening is supposed to have a very low running cost- so why are they closing with grosses in the 350,000-400,000 range?

[James885]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 9:26am

They are closing because the advance was low and it wasn't making enough money to sustain the show. If you look at the historical grosses you'll see that within the last year, the show has been making less money. Sure there have been jumps here and there, but the general trend has been down. The grosses will probably go up now that they've put up a closing notice but if they had continued to run, they would have eventually been making little to nothing.

[lesmis]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 11:57am

Is each shows nut public knowledge or is the info I read here about different shows rough estimates?

[Robert Taylor]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 12:00pm

The nuts are not public knowledge.

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 12:24pm

Spring Awakening's weekly op costs are around $350,000 right now. It used to be closer to $300,000, but since Parish joined, his salary plus the increase in ad/marketing has bumped it closer to 350k.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 12:29pm

The nut is the total of weekly costs. That includes salaries, theater rental, equipment maintenance, advertising, whatever they spend every week.

This does not include a special advertising blitz that the producers might purchase for one month to promote a new cast member. The nut should remain the same each week.

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 12:34pm

No, that's actually not true. I can name more than a dozen shows that have had somewhat of a "name" come into a show which has caused the weekly op costs to go up because of added ad costs.

Weekly op costs are actually never exactly the same from week to week, especially with salaries fluctuating (when an u/s goes on that actor gets more money on top of their regular weekly salary, things like that).

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 12:50pm

I was trying to edit my message to say that, yes, the nut can go up if the weekly costs go up. Firefox was seriously screwing up and preventing me from doing that.

I meant that the nut should not go and up and down too much because of one-time costs. A brief one-time marketing campaign is not included in the weekly nut. That is a different budget.

[chrysler99]

Posted: 10/27/08 at 1:39pm

Also keep in mind that a nut can change once the show re-coups. certain insiders (like the creatives) will likely be entitled to higher weekly payments that were put off initially to make the show more profitable (or to attract investors). once the investors are paid back, the insiders can and do reap larger payments thereby increasing the nut.