‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Smashes Shubert Organization Box Office Mark With Nearly $1.6M In First Full Week

EXCLUSIVE: In its first full week of performances, producer Scott Rudin’s new production of To Kill A Mockingbird has broken the all-time weekly box office record for any Broadway play in the 118-year history of the Shubert Organization.

The record gross of $1,586,946.02 came during the first entire week of shows after the official opening on December 13 at the Shubert Theater. With capacity at 100% or greater for every performance, the show now has an advance of more than $22 million. Its capacity during the week just ended was 101.43%.

Mockingbird took eight performances to beat the previous mark held by Harold Pinter revival Betrayal (also produced by Rudin), which took in $1,442,087 in nine performances in 2013.

The Broadway League is expected to report grosses for all Broadway shows later this afternoon.

Critics have largely praised the new Mockingbird, which features Jeff Daniels in the lead role as lawyer Atticus Finch. The cast also includes Celia Keenan-Bolger, Will Pullen and Danny Wolohan.

The current production reached the stage after a period of legal limbo during which the producers and the Lee estate exchanged lawsuits over the adaptation. The estate said Sorkin veered too far from the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but the parties eventually settled, enabling the show to proceed.

Deadline’s Greg Evans, in his review of the production, called it “simultaneously revisionist and faithful.” Sorkin’s approach, he added, requires “an open mind, a willingness to question the things we so admired about Lee’s tale and its characters, to hold their lessons up for scrutiny in an age when so little of what we once took for granted can withstand the heat.”