SUNSET BLVD. Reviews - Page 68

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 1:47pm

That’s still around $800,000 across the run at your conservative estimate. 

There was a producer in the 1970s who used to remove the post mark from mail senders’ stamps using a chemical solution. The stamps were then good to reuse. Every cent counts!

[binau]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 2:39pm

Nothing surprises me in terms of Broadway costs anymore. I mean, I look at how quick Redwood closed for example with a tiny cast, projected set and one name......seems like it's becoming much more commonplace for shows to cost close to a million a week to run nowadays and that's CRAZY. It used to feel like maybe a show like Wicked could get close or Spider-Man went over, but they were exceptional.....seems to be quickly coming the norm. 

How can that production of CABARET cost almost as much as Spider-Man the musical per month to run? That's wildddddd. 

[TheatreFan4]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 2:47pm

binau said: "Nothing surprises me in terms of Broadway costs anymore. I mean, I look at how quick Redwood closed for example with a tiny cast, projected set and one name......seems like it's becoming much more commonplace for shows to cost close to a million a week to run nowadays and that's CRAZY. It used to feel like maybe a show like Wicked could get close or Spider-Man went over, but they were exceptional.....seems to be quickly coming the norm.

How can that production of CABARET cost almost as much as Spider-Man the musical per month to run? That's wildddddd."

15 years of inflation. 

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Rachel Zegler currently doesn't have a weekly alternate--Bella Brown is just doing select performances, so if that pattern continues on Broadway then theoretically Evita wouldn't have the one performance a week where it loses money like Sunset did (though I'm very curious who her understudy would be).  

If this is an extended run she will absolutely need an alternate, every other production of Evita has needed one.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 3:00pm

They’d be wise to have a dedicated alternate (whether it’s the mistress or a standby or someone else) and a 7x/week schedule for Rachel. It’s tougher to do what GYPSY did and reduce the star’s perfs later on.

It goes without saying that it’s a beast of a role, and this London run is Rachel’s first professional musical theatre part on stage. 

[chernjam]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 3:07pm

I'm pretty sure that the weekly running costs for Sunset was publicly disclosed at $950,000 a week.  The reddit/new writer for BWW (whose name escapes me right now) had speculated that plus fees, etc. that it was about $1.3- 1.4 million a week total and the rest would've gone to paying the investment back.  When I was doing the math, I was on the lower end, imagining it was  1.2/1.3 and with the final grossses got to them returning $11 million/$12 million (and thought especially those last weeks when they were doing blockbuster business and extended to July 20th that they saw an opportunity to close the gap or get much closer).  I guess it remains to be seen, as some have pointed out, the full accounting isn't complete so it's possible it didn't lose $6 million. 

But it does reinforce ALW's argument when Phantom closed that the economics on Broadway are way out of control... and eventually will be its undoing if there's not some major changes.  I mean that Gypsy cost even more than Sunset to mount and would lose most if not all its investment is shocking too

[Timon3]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 4:37pm

As much as I love Andrew Lloyd Webber as a composer, he gave me the love of musical theatre. He has said it himself that he is a dreadful producer. A big mistake is to open a star driven musical in the fall, the fall is more suited to open runs not star driven, where star driven shows are best in the spring near to the Tony Awards.

Maybe Happy Ending that could've posted early closing notices, winning the Tony Award certainly improved their box office.

[chernjam]

Posted: 8/13/25 at 5:39pm

Timon3 said: "As much as I love Andrew Lloyd Webber as a composer, he gave me the love of musical theatre. He has said it himself that he is a dreadful producer. A big mistake is to open a star driven musical in the fall, the fall is more suited to open runs not star driven, where star driven shows are best in the spring near to the Tony Awards.

Maybe Happy Ending that could've posted early closing notices, winning the Tony Award certainly improved their box office."

Definitely agree that ALW as a producer was not a good run for him (as the original production of Sunset Blvd) proved.  But this last outing, while he's listed as a producer, the decision making seemed to come from Michael Harrison/Jamie Lloyd and whoever else in that huge crowd of people that swarmed the stage.