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Welcome to your Grosses Report episode of Broadway radio for Wednesday, March 25, 2026 on Broadway radio's Matt Simone on today's episode, we are breaking down all of the details from last week's Broadway receipts. That would be the week that ended on Sunday, March 22, the 43rd week of the 20252026 Broadway season. In total, we saw three new shows join the boards last week. We will get to all of those shows, but it brings the Great White ways total to 31 plays and musicals running last week. In total, they grossed $36,769,360, just a little bit over $4 million more than the previous week. That translates to a 12% increase at the box office. We also saw a 7% increase in attendance as well to bring the total people seeing Broadway shows last week to 272,806 people. Despite that being a 7% increase over the previous week, it's actually a 9% decline over the corresponding week in 2025. Now, in fairness, there were 33 Broadway shows, so two more shows running during the week that ended on March 23, 2025. So not exactly the same type of comparison, but it does put you in the same ballpark. However, thanks to inflation, I guess the difference between total attendance in average ticket price was not as stark. Between 2026 and 2025 last week, the average price to see a show on Broadway was $134.78. That's up 4% over the previous week, but down 2% from the previous year. Despite the 9% increase in attendance, last week obviously helped a bit. By the beginning of spring break season, three Broadway shows were north of $2 million, led unsurprisingly by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child that came in at $2,640,156. Hamilton was fairly close behind at 2, and the Lion King was just a smidge over $2,000,000. Wicked, also very close at 1.95 followed by Just In Time at 1.87, rounding out the top five. The rest of the shows north of seven figures in descending order are Stranger Things, the First Shadow, Every Brilliant Thing, MJ Aladdin, the Outsiders, the Great Gatsby, Dog Day Afternoon in seven performances, Chess, Ragtime, Moulin Rouge, maybe Happy Ending, Death of a Salesman, Giant, also in seven performances. And they opened on Monday, so there were likely a decent amount of comps with critics and everything coming in the week before. And then we round out the Million Dollar Club with Hadestown and Death Becomes Her. Only three shows saw week to week declines last week. One of them was Chicago, which obviously in that weird week between Whitney Levitt runs did see a $621,000 decline, but still came in at $836,000, almost 837, so that's still pretty good. The other two that saw week to week declines, Fighters and Chess, both of them still at $1.2 million. So they are doing just fine. Now, as I said at the top of the show, there were three new shows that joined the boards last week. They were Becky Shaw, Cats and the fear of 13. Let's take those in alphabetical order, shall we? Becky Shaw over at the Helen Hayes, that of course, is a second stage production. It brought in $213,904 in five performances. Extrapolated out over an eight show week. That comes in at $242,246.40, by the way, of course, as we always talk about the Helen Hayes, the smallest theater on Broadway, just a smidge over 500 seats, and it's a subscription house, so you don't expect the numbers of any show in that theater to be pretty much anywhere near anything else on Broadway. What's important to look at for them is their average ticket price and their capacity. Capacity, very good in the first week at 96.59%. But the average ticket price was a bit lower at $76.23. So again, that's supported by subscription prices and all of that, but it does kind of give you a little bit of an idea as to where things are with Becky Shaw. Next up, let's look at Cats, the Jellicoe ball that did $612,084 over its four performances at the Broadhurst last week. Obviously, this one's pretty easy. You double those four into eight shows and that comes out to $1.2 million. A very good start for them. They were at 100% capacity. We'll obviously talk about that here. In a second. And then we have the fear of 13 starring big time movie stars, two time Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson. It did $474,131 during its three previews at the James Earl Jones Theater. If you extrapolate that out to eight, that did 1.2. So a very good start to a show with two pretty big stars making their Broadway debuts. In total, 28 of Broadway's 31 shows played to 90% capacity or more. We had Ragtime, Every Brilliant Thing and Cats, the Jellicle Ball all at exactly 100%. Dog day afternoon about a quarter of a percent up. And then the Outsiders, Hamilton and Hadestown were all at 101.2 to 101.3. And then finally, just in Time, continues to lead the way at 103.39% again. This was Broadway's 43rd week during the 2025, 2026 season and in total it has brought in $1,549,367,378 during the first 43 weeks of the campaign. That is up 7% over the first 43 weeks of last season. And total attendance is up 3% to come in at 11,645,418. As we talked about on last week on Broadway, looking forward into this week's theatrical schedule, we've got like five or six shows beginning previews this week. So we will start to see some of these when it comes to the number of shows playing, increase quite a bit and then obviously the grosses will increase as well. But it's always exciting to see which ones catch on and to look at the shows that have been running for one season, two seasons, five seasons, ten seasons, and to see how they do with all of the added competition. Those are usually the indicators to see what has staying power and what is going to be around for a while, especially in their shows that opened last season. So excited to see what happens with all of these new shows and really starting to count down to my trip at the end of April. I'm coming up April 30th, I think April 30th and staying until May 8th. So I've got eight days of show seeing. I think if everything works out, I will see an average of two shows a day. Monday, whatever that day is, it will be my only one show day. But I make up for it with one three show day and then two shows every other day. There are currently some Tuesday and Thursday matinees out there. So when we get closer to that, I will talk about my schedule once it's all finalized. I'm still waiting on some invites, waiting on some confirmations and all of that stuff. All right, before we head out, there are a few little bits of news that I wanted to let you know about. On Wednesday morning, Chess the Musical, the revival currently running on Broadway announced who was going to be replacing Lea Michele when she leaves on June 21. I had said that originally I had heard that the plan was for Sara Bareilles to come in and take over the role of Florence Vassi. Obviously with her musical the Interestings getting ready to have its out of town tryout in California next season, that seemed unlikely, especially if she is going to be in it, which I don't know if that's the plan or not still, but we are getting another fairly well known pop singer to take over. But it is one with musical theater roots that is the multi platinum singer, songwriter and actor Joanna Jojo Levesque. She most recently starred on Broadway in Moulin Rouge, but she was also the lead in the out of town tryout for the musical adaptation of Working Girl, which still has plans to come to Broadway. From what I understand, she is going to take over the role of Florence beginning on June 23rd. She is still apparently going to be playing opposite Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher. We don't know how long they're going to be in, but the show is still on sale through September 23rd. That's its third extension. I would imagine that would put Aaron and Nicholas at the end of one year contracts because it began performances on October 15th. So it's a a month of rehearsals and so that's when their one year contracts probably started. Whether or not they extend past that, who knows, probably depends on how the show continues to sell when JoJo takes over that role. Some other real quick film theatery news, the pro shot of Merrily We Roll along will begin streaming on Netflix next week on April 4th. So if you did not get a chance to see it in theaters or you just want to watch it over and over and over and over and over again, which I highly recommend, you will have an opportunity to do that a week from Saturday. And finally there is a new feature length documentary about the making of the Back to the Future musical that is now available on YouTube, on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, other places. It is called A Future on Stage and it includes interviews with a bunch of the people who were involved with the creation of, including cast members, the films director Robert Zemecka the film star, Michael J. Fox and there are tons of interviews with the original Broadway cast. Roger Bart, Casey likes Jelani, Remy, Nathaniel Hackman, a ton of the designers and all of that stuff. So if you're interested in this, I will put a link in the show notes to the trailer and then you can figure out what the best place for you to watch it is from there. All right everybody, that is 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 As I said previously, we will have a ton of episodes coming out throughout this week. We already had last week, tonight on Monday we had the reviews of Giant on Tuesday. We have this on Wednesday. Tomorrow and Patreon I'll have a much delayed episode of Some Like It Pop for you looking back at what Jen and I loved about pop culture in February and recapping our first ever in person meeting. But then also coming up later this week, over the weekend we will have interviews with both Michael John Lachiusa and Rachel Chavkin. So you do not want to miss those. So make sure that you are following us on your podcast platform of choice. All right, thanks again for listening. This has been Matt Tamnini and I'll talk to you soon.
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The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.