Broadway had another billion-dollar season between late May 2010 and Sunday, with shows grossing $1.08 billion — 5.9 percent more than the total for the 2009-10 season — and playing to more than 12.5 million people, according to the Broadway League, the trade group for theater owners and producers. That 2010-11 season attendance figure also reflects an increase of 5.4 percent over the previous season.
Musicals and plays on Broadway have proved to be hardy perennials on the economic landscape for the entertainment industry, with shows steadily filling the sector’s 40 theaters in Manhattan. While commercial hits are something of a rarity — only 25 to 30 percent of new shows usually turn a profit — long-running blockbusters like “Wicked” and “The Lion King” have become reliable money-makers even in bad weeks for other shows, and new additions like “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and “The Book of Mormon” have been selling strongly.
“The Book of Mormon” is proving to be a particularly intensifying hit: The critically acclaimed musical has broken the Eugene O’Neill Theater’s house record every week since mid-April. Last week, for eight performances covering May 24-29, “Mormon” set its latest record of $1.169 million, or 119 percent of the maximum possible gross (due to sales of premium-price tickets, which are common for commercial productions).
The financial success of “Mormon” is also noteworthy because of the relatively small number of seats on sale at the O’Neill. It has 1,066 seats, compared to the largest theater on Broadway, the Foxwoods, which lists 1,930 seats and where “Spider-Man” grossed $1.324 million last week. The producers of “Mormon” have said that they chose the O’Neill, which has traditionally been more of a playhouse than a theater for big-budget musicals, because of its relatively intimate size and atmospherics.
Over all last week, Broadway plays and musicals grossed a total of $23.7 million, compared to $24.9 million for the previous week.
Best Musicals Slide Show
