By Jennifer R Jones | Posted on March 01, 2018 11:38 PM
Frozen and Angels in America Began Performances on a High Note, and Overall the Industry Showed a Slight Downturn in Ticket Sales This Week ending February 25, 2018.
New Shows: Frozen and Angels in America
On February 22, 2018, Frozen began previews at the St. James Theatre, ahead of its opening night scheduled for March 22. Over the course of these four shows, the weekly box office gross was $926,840, which represents 98.0% of potential. With a top ticket price of $297, the average paid admission was $137.43, and the audience was filled up to 100.4% of capacity. With such a strong brand from the Disney animated film, it is natural that audiences would flock to this musical.
Even if the reviews were wholly negative, the innumerable fans of the film would still enable the show to flourish at the box office for the foreseeable future.
Angels in America also started previews. So far only Millennium Approaches (Part 1) has had performances. In its first 3 previews starting February 23, the show brought in a weekly gross of $322,034, which represents 52.1% of its potential. With a top ticket price of $247, the average paid admission was $77.23, and the audience was filled up to 103.4% of its capacity.
That show is therefore demonstrating a hearty demand when tickets are discounted, and as word of mouth spreads, the question is whether they can sell out the audience capacity at full priced tickets.
Many Broadway Shows Slowed Down This Week
While the new shows gained traction, many longer running shows had a slower week, but only by small amounts. The biggest decrease was seen by Kinky Boots, which went down by $157,981 to reach a weekly gross of $700,710, or 54.1% of gross potential. Long-running hit Chicago was the next biggest slowdown, but it only went down by $92,727 to reach a weekly gross of $617,205, or 64.4% of gross potential.
Some Broadway Shows See Five Digit Decrease
Many other five-digit decreases were seen by shows including The Book of Mormon, which went down by $82,161 to reach $1,173,980, Come From Away, which went down by $80,281 to reach $1,216,629, Wicked, which went down by $74,424 to reach $1,744,347, A Bronx Tale, which went down by $70,562 to reach $709,918, and Anastasia, which went down by $65,694 to reach $951,561. Latin History for Morons went up by $84,730 in its final week, and Escape to Margaritaville played an almost full performance week of seven shows, bringing in $751,824, or 49.2% of its gross potential.
