‘The Lion King’ Reigns During Theater’s Happy Holiday Week – Broadway Box Office
03.01.2024 - 19:07
/ deadline.com
A double-holiday week on Broadway – the final week of 2023 – saw a surge in box office, with many shows posting record numbers.
Winner of the week? Disney’s The Lion King, which grossed a massive $4,316,629, not only setting a house record at the Minskoff but a Broadway record for the highest single-week gross ever, a big achievement even when noting that the long-running musical played nine performances, as did other productions over the holidays.
Broadway’s final week of the calendar year included both Christmas and New Year’s Eve, with tourists and high ticket prices sending the total weekly gross for the 27 shows to $45,413,789, a 36% increase over the previous week but about 13% lower than last year’s New Year’s Eve week tally when 33 productions were on the boards.
Total attendance for the week ending December 31 was 256,751, a 14% bump over the previous week (but down 18% from last year). About 96% of all seats were filled, an impressive figure.
A big contributor to last week’s good box office numbers was the average ticket price of $176.88, a holiday boom that reflects a $29 increase over the previous week (and an $11 increase over last year at this time). Here again The Lion King reigned, with a $286.61 average ticket besting the usual front-runner Merrily We Roll Along ($258.20).
Other shows posting various record numbers (for 8 performances unless otherwise noted) or production highs (in addition to The Lion King) were:
Also posting big numbers were The Book of Mormon ($1,530,926); Hadestown ($1,114,449); Merrily We Roll Along, ($1,995,358), Moulin Rouge! ($1,786,154); Shucked ($1,050,251), A Beautiful Noise ($1,114,630, 9 performances); Spamalot ($1,503,187); Hamilton ($2,404,967); Back to the Future ($2,1