Broadway box office has a record-breaking season
2017 was a great year for musical producers on Broadway. Buoyed in part by the continued success of “Hamilton,” the Broadway box office claimed a record-breaking $1.6 billion last year. The previous record was $1.12 billion in 2014. Yet, for every action there’s an equal opposite reaction (pardon the “Hamilton” reference). And in this case, in the era of high-grossing musicals, there may not be as much room left for non-musical theater. Gordon Cox, the theater editor at Variety, had the story.
“As more and more musicals make more and more money, and carve out long lives in what is a limited supply of Broadway theaters, [they] were kind of squeezing the Broadway play out of the picture ” said Cox in an interview with Marketplace host Lizzie O’Leary. “There is enough kind of financial incentive to, you know, embrace the musical and maybe forget about everything but the kind of the biggest huge smash hit play.”
Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
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