Wicked surpasses The Phantom of the Opera as second-highest-grossing show in Broadway history

[curel1]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 11:13am

http://www.playbill.com/article/wicked-surpasses-the-phantom-of-the-opera-as-second-highest-grossing-show-in-broadway-history

[BroadwayConcierge]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 11:44am

Incredible!

[ACL2006]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 11:54am

HAMILTON should be passing all of these shows soon .

[dramamama611]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 12:10pm

^ Because this is about ticket PRICES not attendance.   

 

Really, I'm never impressed about breaking records that have to do with box office $.....it really is irrelevant.  

[Lot666]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 12:19pm

dramamama611 said: "^ Because this is about ticket PRICES not attendance.   
Really, I'm never impressed about breaking records that have to do with box office $.....it really is irrelevant."

Yep, I imagine it must be easy to break gross records when your average ticket price is two, three, or four times that of the competition.

[OKBroadwayFan]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 12:30pm

ACL2006 said: "HAMILTON should be passing all of these shows soon .

 

"

Not sure if your winking face means you are being sarcastic, but.....

Hamilton has grossed $224 million in 2 years.   Roughly $110m a year.   This will take them just under 10 years to reach the $ 1 Billion mark.  Which is 8 years away 2025.    This is assuming that Hamilton can continue at the $2million a week pace, I doubt they can continue at this rate over the next 8 years.   Wicked took 13 years to reach 1 billion.   

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 1:15pm

It will be interesting to see how Hamilton's run plays out. Cause while Hamilton is brilliant and deserves every success it has achieved, Wicked and Phantom of the Opera are successes round the world/ with tourists who can't speak English coming to NY cause their stories aren't rooted in anything specifically American. Hamilton is very much an American musical.

Food for thought.

[bdn223]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 1:22pm

Hamilton is on pass to be the fastest musical to hit the billion dollar milestone in 10 years, but Hamilton also has 5,000 fewer seats to sell a week than Wicked and 3,000 fewer seats than The Lion King. Thus the likelihood that it be able to surpass Wicked and The Lion King in total box office grosses doesn't look good. As its grosses will eventually even out or fall bellow Wicked and The Lion King, as a new zeitgeist musical opens in the next 5-10 years like Wicked did to both The Producers and The Lion King, Book of Mormon did to Wicked, and as Hamilton did to Book of Mormon. The only possible exception to this evening out is The Lion King, which roared back to the front of the pack in 2011 with a successful 15th anniversary marketing campaign by Disney along with the massively successful 3D re-release of the film that September.

[zainmax]

Posted: 7/11/17 at 10:45pm

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "It will be interesting to see how Hamilton's run plays out. Cause while Hamilton is brilliant and deserves every success it has achieved, Wicked and Phantom of the Opera are successes round the world/ with tourists who can't speak English coming to NY cause their stories aren't rooted in anything specifically American. Hamilton is very much an American musical.

Food for thought.

 

"

I am curious to see how the show will be received on the West End. The pre-sale tickets sold out, and I imagine that it will be a very hot ticket. But, will Londoners actually like it?

 

Also, great analysis bdn223 regarding the Lion King.

[Big Apple2]

Posted: 7/12/17 at 2:06am

dramamama611 said: "^ Because this is about ticket PRICES not attendance.   

 

Really, I'm never impressed about breaking records that have to do with box office $.....it really is irrelevant.  

 

"

It will be interesting to see what Phantom's numbers are adjusted for inflation. But really, there is no way to fully gauge this even with the number of tickets sold due to the size of the venue. 

[devonian.t]

Posted: 7/12/17 at 3:57am

Hamilton, like Rent, will date, I fear, and will therefore not have the same longevity as Phantom, Wicked or The Lion King.

[froote]

Posted: 7/12/17 at 4:19am

zainmax, do you not think that the majority of 200,000 or so people that have spent £80-£200 to see Hamilton in the West End haven't already listened to the cast recording and know they like it? The prices were pretty expensive for West End standards and I doubt most people would be willing to bet that much on a show that they don't know anything about and might end up hating. Yet it still sold out 9 months worth of tickets in the space of a couple of weeks.

As someone that splits my time between the UK and US, the hype for Hamilton in London is already there. Heard songs from the cast recording, the mixtape and even Spamilton on UK radio. They had Lin present Best Musical at this year's Oliviers and had to implement a lottery system for tickets to a Q&A with him as the demand was so high. 

As for it being dated, it already is, but it works anyway. Whereas Rent used 90s rock in the 90s, Hamilton mostly uses 80s/90s style rap in the 2010s. I don't expect it to have a run like Phantom or Lion King as those are shows that absolutely anyone from any country can see, understand and enjoy. But I could see it having a similar run to Wicked.