Will Heathers Transfer?

[passing strange]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 12:46pm

Hi everyone! I'm just curious. Does anyone think there's a chance Heathers would transfer from the West End  to Broadway while Mean Girls is playing? I'd love to see it for the '80's nostalgia vibe. I missed out while it was playing Off-Broadway a few years ago.

Updated On: 10/15/18 at 12:46 PM

[\_(•_•)_/]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 12:54pm

I think it would be stupid for them to transfer. The heathers fandom have moved on to shows like hamilton, dear evan hansen, mean girls, be more chill. The drive for heathers just isnt there anymore.

[Sondheimite]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 12:58pm

heathers couldn't sell a small off-broadway house.  no way they could last a month in a broadway house.  that's just the facts. 

[thegamesiplay]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:02pm

Heathers didn’t sell off broadway because its fanbase was built off of a bootleg that at the time was released too late in the run for anyone to go see it. Be More Chill on the other hand benefitted from a bootleg having been discovered before it even considered an off broadway run and became a hit. The fanbase for Heathers is there now that it is a more accessible show and far more popular than it was off-Broadway.

[passing strange]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:03pm

Maybe target an older audience. Those who grew up as fans of the movie. I don't know, maybe just wishful thinking.

[Sondheimite]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:07pm

I'm sorry but I think it's delusional to think that Heathers could have a successful Broadway run. 

[michaelhale]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:09pm

thegamesiplay said: "Heathers didn’t sell off broadway because its fanbase was built off of a bootleg that at the time was released too late in the run for anyone to go see it. Be More Chill on the other hand benefitted from a bootleg having been discovered before it even considered an off broadway run and became a hit. The fanbase for Heathers is there now that it is a more accessible show and far more popular than it was off-Broadway."

There never was a BMC bootleg besides the audio boot which plenty of people didn't listen to. BMC, if anything, benefited from not having a boot which upped the off broadway run's value. 

[darquegk]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:11pm

Heathers currently makes more in licensing than it ever did or could Off-Broadway. They're not delusional enough to stop a moderately successful money train to gamble on "it'll run a million years;" the big NYC runs of shows like this aren't permanent stops, they're commercials for the album and the licensing rights.

[JSquared2]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:21pm

thegamesiplay said: "Heathers didn’t sell off broadway because its fanbase was built off of a bootleg that at the time was released too late in the run for anyone to go see it. Be More Chill on the other hand benefitted from a bootleg having been discovered before it even considered an off broadway run and became a hit. The fanbase for Heathers is there now that it is a more accessible show and far more popular than it was off-Broadway."

 

That's ridiculous.  The stans that traffic in ILLEGAL bootlegs don't pay Broadway prices. 

[Rainah]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:27pm

- there was 100% a video bootleg of BMC. Heathers also has multiple video bootlegs, up to and including workshops that predate the off broadway run. 

- I think it could be successful on broadway with some reworking. Better direction, better sets, etc. The score is pretty good, not uniformly excellent but has some standouts. 

- Probably not any time soon, as noted they are making good money licensing and Mean Girls would be direct competition. 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:41pm

Usually shows don't pull the rights to shows just because of a professional run - except within a certain radius to the production (NYC/Connecticut/NJ - for example).   We once had rights pulled for Grease  because a touring company was going to be in Boston around the same time - but they wouldn't have been pulled just because of the revival.

 

Heck, School of Rock even made the show available DURING the b'way run to schools and such.

 

That being said, NO it is unlikely that Heathers will transfer and less likely it will be successful.

[bdn223]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:43pm

Heathers won't transfer until Mean Girls is on its last legs or closes. Yes the two are completely different takes on the teen genre, with Mean Girls a satire of 80's and 90s teen movies, while Heathers is a dark teen comedy, but both are lumped into the teen musical genre. Every decade has their culture defining teen girl world  movie. The 80s was a boom for the genre but outside of the John Hughes movies, but  I would say Heathers is the girl world movie of the decade. The 90's was Clueless, and the 2000s was Mean Girls. As such the two musicals would likely cannibalize each other's audiences, which was why although Heathers, Mean Girls, Bring It On, and Clueless were all initially announced as musicals around the same time, but as one of the projects seemed to be readying for Broadway/New York the other ones seemed to stall. Lysistrata Jones even changed its name from Give it Up! because it didn't want to be confused with Bring It On. (With hindsight I am sure its producers regret as the confusion might of boosted ticket sales).

Unless there was an unexpectedly weak season like last season where producers think Heathers is a shoe in for Best Musical, or it somehow manages to win the Olivier it would be fiscally irresponsible to bring Heathers to Broadway where the market already is filled by Mean Girls, and also partially Dear Evan Hansen, and possible Be More Chill. 

[passing strange]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:51pm

_(•_&bull_/ said: "I think it would be stupid for them to transfer. The heathers fandom have moved on to shows like hamilton, dear evan hansen, mean girls, be more chill. The drive for heathers just isnt there anymore. "

That's exactly what I thought, until a few weeks ago.  I was browsing through Broadway Flea, and spotted a big crowd of teenagers singing "Dead Girl Walking" at the top of their lungs.  I still think the fans are there.  But, I agree that it's highly unlikely that it would make it's way back to Broadway, because of the risk.

[haterobics]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 1:55pm

thegamesiplay said: "Be More Chill on the other hand benefitted from a bootleg having been discovered before it even considered an off broadway run and became a hit. The fanbase for Heathers is there now that it is a more accessible show and far more popular than it was off-Broadway."

The BMC fan base was built through an early official cast recording that got more than 150M listens on Spotify, not a bootleg. And even so, did enough people watch this video to fill a Broadway house 8x a week? 

[thegamesiplay]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 2:15pm

JSquared2 said: "thegamesiplay said: "Heathers didn’t sell off broadway because its fanbase was built off of a bootleg that at the time was released too late in the run for anyone to go see it. Be More Chill on the other hand benefitted from a bootleg having been discovered before it even considered an off broadway run and became a hit. The fanbase for Heathers is there now that it is a more accessible show and far more popular than it was off-Broadway."



That's ridiculous. The stans that traffic in ILLEGAL bootlegs don't pay Broadway prices."

Which is why Be More Chill sold out off broadway and is transferring to Broadway, right? Everyone said that it wouldn’t make it commercially because it was too niche, the fanbase has already moved on, etc. and it’s doing quite well right now.

[Kad]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 2:17pm

 It's pretty well established that it was BMC's cast recording that really helped cement its fanbase- and the success of its Broadway transfer is anything but assured right now.

[thegamesiplay]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 2:21pm

The cast recording was released on spotify after a full-length audio boot was leaked a few months prior and made the rounds, and then they released amateur licensing rights and regional productions became very popular to the point fans were audio bootlegging those. I’m not defending bootlegs, this is literally what happened. Bootlegs have made little shows that may not have gotten the same exposure as Broadway shows into hits. Heathers was a little show that gained a cult status after its bootlegs began circulating.

[haterobics]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 2:28pm

thegamesiplay said: "Which is why Be More Chill sold out off broadway and is transferring to Broadway, right? Everyone said that it wouldn’t make it commercially because it was too niche, the fanbase has already moved on, etc. and it’s doing quite well right now."

How do we know that? Aside from hopefully selling tickets online, it is doing nothing right now... one run ended, another hasn't begun.

But they do have some math to overcome: They are going to have to sell 656 extra seats per performance to sell out on Broadway, which means an extra 5,248 seats per week. Selling out a short run in a small space doesn't mean there is exponential, long-term interest.

And passion is irrelevant if it doesn't translate into ticket sales.

[haterobics]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 2:38pm

thegamesiplay said: "The cast recording was released on spotify after a full-length audio boot was leaked a few months prior and made the rounds, and then they released amateur licensing rights and regional productions became very popular to the point fans were audio bootlegging those. I’m not defending bootlegs, this is literally what happened."

Yes, but even if this lineage were accurate, it seems to skew a lot of the appeal to the bootleg over the official audio and licensing rights. Even the creators/cast of the show cite Spotify as the turning point, when there would be no reason for them to ignore bootlegs if they did play a role.

[dearalanaaaa]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 2:43pm

I'm a teen who knows several other musical teens. My answer is a solid no.

This may be skewed, since I'm on the older end (18) but nonetheless still is relevant.
I was in high school when the BMC/Heathers/Hamilton/Hansen square was born. They all would say it was reccomended through YouTube's shuffle, or Spotify. Specifically this was displayed more with starting on Hamilton and moving to BMC, which got them to Hansen and Heathers. But now many have fallen out of that and gotten into anime or another media. Fujoshis still stay around those musicals though, and they saturated it from last year, making it 20x more toxic than before.
There are people who haven't fallen out yet. And they've moved onto classical, grungy, or basically any other musical to get away from the quad.

From the firsthand, I know the second BMC people make a marketing mistake (a la Voltron) or a bootleg is dropped, sales will drop dramatically, and since Heathers has done both of those, their sales won't be strong.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 10:32pm

I think it has the best score of the bunch, and I saw it at New World and loved it. I thought the production itself was complete trash. I'd love to see a more interesting design/direction to it. Maybe with the success of the West End we might get a Broadway run, if only to spur on the regional rights.

[Sondheimite]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 11:38pm

listen to me

i'm not knocking someone liking the show

i'm not even commenting on the quality of the show.

But Heathers will never be on Broadway.

Ever.

[BroadwayRox3588]

Posted: 10/15/18 at 11:42pm

Please, God, no.

[haterobics]

Posted: 10/16/18 at 8:55am

Sondheimite said: "listen to me

i'm not knocking someone liking the show

i'm not even commenting on the quality of the show.

But Heathers will never be on Broadway.

Ever."

Even the Heathers TV show is having trouble landing a place to air given the subject matter, although I think they finally found one only after they edited the number and length of episodes.

 

[Dallas Theatre Fan]

Posted: 10/16/18 at 9:50am

One of the main reasons Heathers is so successful on the West End right now is the star casting of Carrie Hope Fletcher.  She is a Youtuber with a huge teenage fan base. Most people want to see her not the show. The show is set to close when her contract in late November. 

Unless The Producers can find someone with the right draw don't expect it to transfer.