Broadway Box Office Inches Back Up; ‘Finding Neverland’ Off 40% Since August

Tick tock, tick tock: After late September’s 6 percent tock in Week 18 of the Broadway season, sales ticked back 3.5 percent to ring in October, with most shows listing modest gains. One exception worth keeping an eye on: Finding Neverland, Harvey Weinstein’s major wager on a big musical built on a title from his company’s library. The Peter Pan story is off almost 40 percent since mid-August, having dropped in every week but one since then, after a few months of $1 million-plus reports. Sales were down to $724.8K, a drop of $10.3K from the week before, hitting 49 percent of gross potential (just shy of $1.5 million) at the Nederlander-owned Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Attendance, too, was off, with the 1,504-seat house at 71 percent of capacity. Expect rough sailing for the Jolly Roger crew, at least until the lost boys and girls of Touristland begin arriving in mid-November.

Broadway’s other family-positioned shows had better news. Disney’s Aladdin, at the New Amsterdam, was near SRO at $1.4 million, up a bit from the week before; The Lion King, at the Nederlanders’ Minskoff, was back to roaring, up $133.8K to $1.9 million and an average ticket price of $139.46. Wicked, at the Nederlanders’ Gershwin, was up a bit to $1.4 million and 82 percent of gross potential.

Also showing slight gains were A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder (up $3.7K), Amazing Grace (up $30K), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (up $4.5K), Chicago (up $46K), Fun Home (up $44.4K), Hand To God (up $33K), Matilda (up $37.6K), Something Rotten! (up $79K), The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time (up $51K) and The Phantom Of The Opera (up $7K).

Hamilton was down $86K at the Nederlanders’ Richard Rodgers, but at $1.5 million the histo-rap musical was still out-selling potential by 11 percent. The Deaf West revival of the Duncan Sheik/Steven Sater musical Spring Awakening opened to positive notices but with press comps and opening night, it tallied just $402K at the Nederlanders’ Brooks Atkinson; we’ll have to wait a few weeks for a true measure of the impact of those reviews and the very good word-of-mouth coming out of West 47th Street.

With six newcomers in previews, Broadway’s 28 shows rang up a total of $21.2 million in sales last week, an increase of $846K or 3.5 percent over the previous week, according to figures released by the trade group Broadway League.