Christmas is usually the most bountiful week of the Broadway year, with a slight deceleration in theatergoing as tourists head home over New Year’s. But this season flipped that trend with record-shattering box office for the week ended Jan. 4 of $42,773,882.
That total helped push the number of admissions for the calendar year up by 13 percent. Total grosses for 2014 were $1.362 billion, with attendance of 13.13 million. The Broadway season is officially calculated from midyear to midyear, pegged to the Tony Awards, with the 2014-15 season currently in front by 14 percent. Season-to-date attendance stands at 8,244,043.
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The Christmas and New Year’s period was the most lucrative in industry history. Across Broadway, existing house records toppled, led by Wicked, which grossed $2,740,642 for the week ending Jan. 4, the highest total ever for an eight-performance week. Touring productions of Wicked also smashed records in Los Angeles and Detroit, bringing the show’s North American earnings for the two-week holiday period to more than $15.6 million.
Disney stablemates The Lion King and Aladdin also set new highs last week, grossing $2,514,893 and $1,842,291, respectively. As reported last week, The Lion King for the second consecutive year was Broadway’s highest annual earner and the first show to top $100 million in a single year.
Industry pundits may have lost count of how many times The Book of Mormon has set a new house record, but that hit chalked up another one last week, with $2,204,280. The theater-biz comedy It’s Only a Play, reteaming Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, marked yet another record with $1,455,818, while The Elephant Man, starring Bradley Cooper, also bested its own previous high with $1,069,102.
One of the top grossers of the week was the touring magic-act showcase The Illusionists — Witness the Impossible, which added another $2,217,250 to its tally. That brought the production’s six-week holiday engagement on Broadway to a hefty $8,156,239 total.
Mirroring Christmas week, a total of 19 productions grossed more then $1 million apiece last week.
They included A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder ($1,011,822), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical ($1,264,728), Cabaret ($1,051,850), Cinderella ($1,873,246), Jersey Boys ($1,091,460), Kinky Boots ($1,572,870), Les Miserables ($1,425,137), Mamma Mia! ($1,002,625), Matilda ($1,502,817), Motown: The Musical ($1,215,495), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ($1,089,779) and The Phantom of the Opera ($1,649,106).
Starting on Jan. 13, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson in Constellations, another 18 productions are so far scheduled to open between now and the cut-off date for Tony Awards eligibility in late April.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
