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Hello and welcome to your Broadway Grosses report for Wednesday, February 18, 2026. We are looking at the week that ended on February 15th. That was the 38th week of the 2025, 2026 Broadway season. Of note, there were 27 shows that had performances on Broadway last week. What's important to realize is that Even though only one show had closed the previous week, Oedipus closed on February 8th, they were down actually two shows stem. That is because in addition to Oedipus being closed, as we talked about on last week on Broadway a couple days ago, Stranger Things, the first Shadow, was filming. And I didn't realize this necessarily at the time, but they did not have any public performances during that week. So we had a total of 27 shows playing on Broadway, down from 29 the previous week. But despite that, thanks in no small part to both the President's Day holiday and the end of Broadway week, we actually saw an 11% increase in total grosses, rising to $33,578,362. But attendance was down 4% to come in at 246,718 bucks. The grosses are up 4% over the previous year, which was just about 1.4 million more than the corresponding week in 2025. Attendance was up 1% as well. The average ticket price, though, jumped quite a bit, probably because of that holiday. It rose from $117, 50, almost $19 to $136.10. That is a 16% increase from week to week in total because of the holiday. Because of the ending of Broadway week, we saw three shows north of $2 million that was led, as it has been recently, by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. That show, still riding the wave of Tom Felton joining the cast as Draco Malfoy, came in at $2,682,872. Hamilton was about half a million dollars behind, but still north of 2 at 2,198,000. And then Wicked was at 2,024,000. The Lion King was fairly close to hitting 2 million as well, coming in at 1.9. And then Chess was in fifth place at $1.59 million. The rest of the shows north of seven figures in descending order are just in time. MJ Chicago. We'll come back to that. Aladdin, the Great Gatsby, Hell's Kitchen, maybe Happy Ending in Hell. And Jason's final week of performances in the show, the Outsiders, Moulin Rouge, Death Becomes Her, Ragtime, Hadestown, and Buena Vista Social Club. Every single show on Broadway last week, save one, actually saw an increase and many of them saw six figure increases. The only show that didn't though, was Bug over at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater that actually saw just under $70,000 decline from week to week to come in at $490,000. As I said, I'd heard some rumblings, rumblings that I didn't necessarily always believe necessarily that this show was going to move into the Shubert Theater. It seems like that is getting less and less likely with every week that we go by and talk about grosses or talk about that stuff that happened on Broadway last week and not getting an announcement. So while it is still certainly possible, and it's still certainly possible that something else could come into the Shubert at some point, it is looking less and less likely like something is going to be there for the end of this Broadway season. But again, you never know. They could make the announcement as soon as I get done with recording this episode. And I'll have to do a turnaround today on Broadway, but that's the way things are looking right now. Now back over to the Ambassador Theater, where Chicago pulled in $1,410,093. And you might be thinking that's pretty healthy. Nothing great, but pretty healthy. That is actually the best grosses week that Chicago has had since the holiday season of 2023. And that, of course, is no doubt due to the presence of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Dancing with the Stars star Whitney Levitt playing Roxie Hart. She's currently in the show through March 15th. I would be shocked if they don't find a way to keep her there for even longer. That $1.4 million is roughly double what the show has been averaging during a normal week this year. And of course again, President's Day, weekend, Broadway week, all of those things. But very, very good for the Weisslers over at Chicago. We will see if they're able to keep Whitney there even longer. All right, I'm jumping in here with some breaking news because as soon as I got done recording this episode, I got a press release from the folks over at Chicago talking about the very thing I was just mentioning here on the show. And it is the fact that even though Whitney Levitt will be leaving Chicago, she's coming back very quickly afterwards because she will be returning to the show from March 23rd through April 5th. That is just like two weeks. The rumor is that her Dancing with the Stars co star Mark Ballas, who has been on Broadway before will be playing Billy Flynn at the time. So just a short two week run there, allegedly with her Dancing with the Stars partner. But that is what is going on over at the Ambassador Theater. But moving uptown a little bit over to the Broadway theater, we have some new casting happening over at the Great Gatsby. We already knew that Eva Noble Zada would be returning to the role of Daisy Buchanan and her real life husband Reeve Carney would be playing Jay Gatsby. Now we know that Corbin Blue, who had played Nick Carraway in the original London cast of the Great Gatsby, would be returning to the role this time on Broadway and that John Bailman will be taking over the role as Tom Buchanan. John and Corbin will join the production on the same day as Reeve on March 30th. Eva will start a little earlier. She was supposed to already begin but she had a vocal injury as we talked about previously. She's going to start on March 4th. So Whitney Levitt leaving but then coming back to Chicago for a couple weeks and new stars over at the Great Gatsby. All right, let me drop you back in to the rest of this week's episode. Marjorie prime wrapped up its run from Second Stage over the Helen Hayes Theater last week on Broadway, seeing an increase of $49,627. That brings it up to a total of $405,000 in its final plus playing week. Again, this was the 38th week of the 20252026 Broadway season and so far the main stem has brought in $1,394,123,670. That is up 8% over the corresponding time period from last season and has seen an accumulation of 10,416,208 people sit in Broadway seats now, moving away from grosses real quick. I didn't want to drop this in because I teased some things that I was hearing about some casting over at Titanique. I had teased that some people might be gleeful and that some other people might think the casting was pitch perfect. I'm starting to hear that those rumors are not going to happen. Instead, what I'm hearing now is that an original Titanique star is going to be rejoining the production and that some people might scream all the way up in the heights about the casting that's going to be announced now. These new stars not nearly as big of names as the ones that had originally been rumored. So I'm not sure what to have on Titanic. Overall, I still am worried for this show. A show that I really really liked Off Broadway about it, being able to draw folks at the St. James Theater, especially after having a multi year run in New York and a lot of people probably saw it without having stars. I'm not sure if just the idea of Celine Dion songs in a Titanic parody is enough. I hope it is because I think it's brilliant and hilarious. So I hope that works. Now I will say a certain Glee star who might have been the subject of the rumor that I mentioned with Titanique has been teasing a return to New York. I am hearing that this is going to be a minimal three week return to New York and might be used as a stopgap in between the departure of one beloved to Tony winning star and the debut of another beloved Broadway star who doesn't have a Tony but has Tony nominations. So that is what I'm hearing, that someone might just be shooed right in between these two Broadway heartthrobs for a limited run. Alright everybody, that is all that I have for you today here on Broadway Radio. If you want more BroadwayRadio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio thanks for listening. This has been Matt Tamnini and I'll talk to you. It.