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Broadway Grosses Report: March 18, 2026; ‘Wanted,’ ‘School Girls’ coming to Broadway
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Welcome to your Broadway Grosses report for Wednesday, March 18, 2026 on Broadway radio's Matt Tiamnini. I'm going to be running you through all of the box office details for the 42nd week of the 20252026 Broadway season. And then after all of the financial stuff is done, we will pivot over to talking about a very busy last few days in terms of Broadway and Off Broadway news. So stay tuned for that. But let's start with the grosses and last week Broadway maintained 28 shows thanks to all of the rigmarole with that winter storm a few weeks ago finally being over. Broadway saw a 16% increase at the box office to come in at $32,759,044. While that is a 16% increase over last week is actually a 13% decline over the previous year. However, during the corresponding week of 2025, there was actually three more shows on Broadway. So that makes a little bit more sense when comparing apples to apples in terms of attendance, the main STEM saw a 6% increase with 253,822 people seeing Broadway shows last week and the Average ticket price increased 10% to come in at $129.6pennies. Looking at the individual shows haul, we did have two shows north of $2 million, led of course by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to come in at $2,507,137. It was followed by Hamilton at 2.1 million, Wicked at 1.7, the Lion King at 1.7, but just about 5,000 dol just in time in fifth place at 1.68. The rest of the shows north of seven figures in descending order are Chicago. We'll come back to that. Stranger Things, the First, Shadow Chess, the Outsiders, MJ, Every Brilliant Thing, Aladdin, Ragtime, the Great Gatsby, Dog Day Afternoon, Death of a Salesman and Moulin Rouge with maybe Happy Ending just a couple thousand dollars behind. I said we will come back to Chicago. And that is because in the show's 29ish years on Broadway, it has never a week in which it has grossed more than it did last week. The final week of Whitney Levitt's first run in the show, it brought in $1,457,931. As we know, Whitney Levitt of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Dancing with the Stars fame ended her first six week tenure with the show on Sunday. And then we'll come back for another 5ish weeks with her Dancing with The stars partner Mark Ballas starting next Monday, March 23rd. During her time in the show, Chicago has brought in $8,049,526. That is also the highest grossing six week span in the show's history as well. Dog Day Afternoon joined the boards last week and as I said, it was north of $1 million, but just barely. So it came in at $1,059,381, but that is in just six shows. So if you extrapolate that to an average eight show week come in at $1.4 million. A very good showing for this adaptation in early days on Broadway. Death of a Salesman also doing very well. In its first few weeks of previews at the Winter Garden Theater, it saw nearly $700,000 in increased box office from its first week to its second. Obviously this is its first week at eight shows, so we expected an increase, but fairly solid to be coming in at over $1 million for them already. Another show that joined Broadway last week was the John Lithgow led play Giant. It brought in $755,021 during its five previews and sold 96% of its tickets at the Music Box. So again, if you take that in and extrapolate it, over eight shows, it brought in just over 1.2 million. Another good showing for a play on Broadway. As we start to see spring breaks happening and families and school groups heading to New York, you will notice that a lot of the family and student focus shows, Stranger Things, the First Shadow, the Lion King, Hamilton, Wicked, Outsiders, Aladdin, are all seeing huge jumps. All of those shows saw more than $200,000 in increased box office revenue last week, led by stranger things, the first shadow that increased $403,000. Now keep in mind that it only did seven shows the previous week. So built into this number is an added show, but still pretty impressive given the fact that it did kind of take people to get into this and to buy tickets for this. If you remember back in its early days on Broadway a year and a half ago, at this point it was not doing well and I be honest with you, I wasn't sure that it was going to be able to maintain its run on Broadway for very long. Now it is doing well. Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child levels of well, but we saw that show kind of in that same area before Tom Felton came to the show. So it does look like Stranger Things has found its stride. Not blowing things out of the water, but also doing fairly well. It's a tech heavy show. Is it making a ton weekly? I don't know, but it seems like it is. It is holding its own. In total on Broadway, 23 of 28 shows last week saw capacities at 90% or more. They were led by Ragtime and Every brilliant thing at 100% and dog day Afternoon just a tick over Hamilton Chicago, the Outsiders and Hadestown were all between 101 and 101.16%. Then just in Time continues to lap the field at 103.42% capacity. Again, interesting to see what happens when first Matthew Morrison and then Jeremy Jordan take over that run. In total, during the first 42 weeks of the 20252026 season, Broadway has grossed $1,512,598,018, up 7% over the corresponding period during last season, with total attendance also up 3% to come in at $11,372,612. It'll be really interesting to me. As I talked about at the top, like last year, we saw more shows beginning performances during March than we have so far this season. There are a couple I talked about them in terms of things starting their previews, mostly plays. But as we get more of these musicals, and not nearly as many as maybe we've had in years past, starting in later March and then especially into April, it'll be interesting to see how the attendance and box office numbers fare if they will continue to rise and be significantly more than we saw last season, or if it'll level out just because there is too much quantity available and not enough people in the audiences to support all the shows. All right, I want to dive into some of the exciting news that we've had over the last few days. First, it was exclusively reported by people but wanted the new musical previously known as Gun and Powder will make its Broadway debut this fall. It will begin performances at the James Earl Jones Theater on October 15th ahead of an opening night on November 8th. Real Life BFFs Solea Pfeiffer and Lisi LaFontaine will lead the production. They have both been involved with the show from its early workshop days. Solea led the original Washington D.C. out of town tryout opposite at Emmy raver Lampman. And then when neither of them could continue for the next one at the Paper mill Playhouse, Lisi LaFontaine and Sierra Renee stepped into the lead roles. As we've talked about, Ciara was not happy to not be continuing with the show, and she has since sued the production for a violation of her contract, but we will see Soleil and Lisa on stage portraying real life sisters Mary and Martha Clark. They were black twin sisters in the late 18th who were able to pass as white in Texas as they attempted to save their family from both physical and financial difficulties. This is the second new musical that we have a confirmed date and house for for the 20262027 Broadway season. Of course we already know that Galileo will be playing the Shubert Theater beginning performances on November 10th and I imagine that sometime in the relatively near future. I don't think it would be like now or April, but sometime May, June, July. I think we will hear about a beloved Peruvian bear heading over to the Al Hirschfeld. But that was not the only new show announcement that we got on Tuesday because we also heard that one of the most acclaimed Off Broadway plays of the last decade will make its Broadway premiere thanks to the Manhattan Theater Club and it will be Jocelyn Biot's Schoolgirls or the African Mean Girls play. The show will begin to performances at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on September 8th. The show had originally been a part of MCC season in 20172018 and will finally make its way to Broadway. No word yet who will be in the cast for this company, if any or all of the Off Broadway company will come with it, but I would imagine that at least a handful if not all of them will be there. As she did Off Broadway and as she did with Bo's Jaja's African hair braiding on Broadway as well. Whitney White will direct this Broadway mounting in casting news that I'm gonna take a little bit of credit for, even though I really have absolutely no reason to. I had once told you that I had heard that two time Tony Award winner Kara Young would be starring opposite Don Cheadle and Ayo Edebiri in Proof on Broadway. And then when they announced the cast, Kara was not a part of it. Instead, the part that I thought she was gonna be playing was going to be led by Orange is the New Black and Handmaid's Tale star Sameera Wily. However, Wiley has had to withdraw from the production due to a quote, treatable medical condition. So whatever that is, we wish Samira the absolute best and hope we get to see her on stage and on Broadway very soon. But in her stead, Kara Young has joined the production. She will join IO Don and Jin Ha who is incredible in the show when it begins performances at the Booth Theater on March 31. First, it was already at the top of my list for things I have to see this spring because I love IO and Don and this property. But throwing in Carrie Young who is absolutely the best working on stage right now makes it an absolutely must see. So I cannot wait for that. Speaking of casting coups, the social media accounts for Heather's Off Broadway had been doing some teases about bringing in a new woman to play Ms. Fleming and Veronica's mom. They were teasing it, didn't really know who it was. I hadn't heard anything. But yesterday, kind of surprisingly, they announced that Lisa Ann Walter would be taking over the role beginning on April 27th. Now, Lisa Ann Walter, if you are unfamiliar, already works in a school. She is one of the stars of Abbott elementary on abc. She is also a stand up comedian. She was also in the beloved Lindsay Lohan Parent Trap movie. She is going to be stepping in to Heathers now, presumably during the hiatus of Abbott Elementary. No word necessarily on how long she is going to be in the show, but Heather's did recently extend off Broadway until September 6th. And then finally a pretty exciting story for fans of plays. Yesterday it was exclusively announced in Deadline that Best Wall's critically acclaimed play Liberation, which I assume will get a number of Tony nominations here in a few weeks, will go on kind of a mini tour. It'll play select major markets as a multi theater co production throughout 2027, including beginning in January at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. It'll run there from January 27 through February 28 with additional venues and dates to be announced. This show, like Schoolgirls or the African Mean Girls play, is directed by Whitney White. So it'll be very cool to see this one go across the country. I would love for it to play my hometown of Columbus, Ohio since it is set in Ohio and to be able to see what that is like there. But stay tuned for all of the semi tour announcements of dates and locations in your area. It's not going to be a part of like your big Broadway musical season at the normal touring houses, but it very well likely might play some of the larger, more prestigious regional houses in your area. All right everybody, that's all that I have for you today. Thank you as always for supporting Broadway radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio thanks again for listening. This has been Matt Tamminini and I'll talk to you.