Breaking Baz: Baz Luhrmann & ‘Moulin Rouge!’ Team Cheer The Musical’s Recoupment On Broadway, The West End And Down Under – Anatomy Of A Hit
31.07.2023 - 19:47
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: Moulin Rouge! The Musical, based on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 luscious pop classic movie starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent, has recouped its costs — not only the $28 million Broadway price tag, but it also recouped sizable sums in London’s West End and Australia.
Luhrmann tells me that it’s “so gratifying that breaking even is such a big deal in the theater.”
As an antipodean, he’s especially gratified with Moulin Rouge!’s hit status in Australia.
“Australia, the English one, the Broadway one — they’ve all done it,” and “that’s down to the relentless drive that Carmen and her team in Australia, New York and London had to fulfill the dictum that the show must go on,” he says with brio in referring to Carmen Pavlovic, CEO of Sydney-based Global Creatures, the principal production company behind Moulin Rouge! The Musical.
“Check with Carmen,” Luhrmann suggests.
On a recent morning (her nighttime) in Bondi Beach, where she resides with her husband and two children, I dutifully obeyed my namesake.
“We hit recoupment on Broadway whenever we did, a long time now,” Pavlovic confirms.
There was reluctance to shout about it because “I thought it feels a bit icky coming back from the pandemic. And I don’t know, I just thought it might look a bit arrogant or something,” she says, clearly still uncomfortable boasting.
But undermining that reticence is grit. And that’s what first attracted Luhrmann to Global Creatures, the live entertainment company co-founded by Pavovic and Gerry Ryan.
“The reason I went to them as opposed to many, many other offers and opportunities,” Luhrmann says. “is that Carmen and her partner Gerry had this show on, which was the dinosaur show Walking with Dinosaurs. And at