Broadway Shows Down At Box Office, But ‘Les Miz’ And ‘Aladdin’ Could Lead Comeback

Broadway shows took a beating at the box office in the most recent week for which numbers are available, but results for this week should get a boost from two big new shows going into previews on Broadway.

One of those new Broadway shows is not new at all, but a revival of the long-running musical Les Miserables, an adaptation of the 19th-century Victor Hugo novel about the French Revolution. The original Broadway production opened in 1987 and ran for 6,680 performances, making it the fifth-longest running show in Broadway history.

Now Les Miserables is back. It first preview performance on March 2 packed the house, playing to 100 percent capacity and pulling in a healthy $180,171 for the single performance.

Another apparent blockbuster in the making, Disney’s Aladdin, capitalized on its familiar title and appeal to children as well as their parents to earn $691,812 for its first five preview performances, despite a relatively low $80 average ticket price due to the widespread discounting that most Broadway shows use to pull in an audience in the early going — and often after that.

Otherwise, the financial outlook for Broadway shows in the week ending March 2 was on the grim side. Overall, the box office take for 23 shows in Broadway theaters was down about $2 million from the previous week. Only five shows saw in increase in their take.

The regular top performers at the Broadway box office were all down in revenues, though they easily held their places atop the charts. Leader The Book of Mormon dropped $66,951 to finish with a $1,549,715 week, while the seemingy unstoppable juggernaut that is Wicked took a bigger hit, falling $226,095 for a total of $1,539,830.

The Lion King, Kinky Boots and Motown The Musical rounded out the list of million-dollar box office performers, but all came in well under their previous week’s take.

The Roald Dahl-based musical Matilda fell out of the million dollar club, at least for the week, taking a $246,776 dip to finish at $953,741.

The Bridges of Madison County, an adaptation of the 1990s bestselling romance novel, though it has been struggling at the box office, actually saw its take rise by $25,690. But the show still finished with an anemic $390,578.

At the bottom of the list of Broadway shows, the baseball drama Bronx Bombers ended with $169,730 in what turned out to be its final week, closing after less than one month on the Broadway stage.

[Images Via Bing and Disney]