Steve McQueen's female-centric heist movie Widows might be packed with familiar and accomplished women like Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki and Michelle Rodriguez, but magnetic breakout Cynthia Erivo still jumped off the screen in her first ever feature. Erivo is a storied stage actress, and has already won an Emmy, a…

Deadline has confirmed that Warner Bros is developing The Color Purple for the big screen again, but this time based off the Tony-winning Broadway musical. Steven Spielberg, who directed and produced the 11-time Oscar-nominated 1985 film, is returning as a producer with Quincy Jones, though he will not direct. Both…

January and February are the times that try Broadway producers’ souls, as tourists head home, winter twofer sales set in and weak shows are culled from the herd. The box office fell sharply from Week 32, the last of the year, with many shows doing nine performances (or, the case of The Illusionists magic act, nearly…

Producers this evening informed the cast of The Color Purple that the show, which won the 2016 Tony Award for best musical revival, will play its final performance on January 8 after 449 regular and 33 preview performances at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. A North American tour of the production is set to go out in…

Attention shoppers! Tony-winning Broadway producer Scott Sanders has sold his self-named company to Westfield Corporation, which builds and operates malls from Los Angeles’ Century City to the redeveloped World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. New York-based Westfield announced today that Sanders, who won a best…

Jennifer Holliday, who claimed instant stardom as Effie White in the 1981 premiere of Dreamgirls, will take over the role of chanteuse Shug Avery in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple beginning October 4. The Tony and Grammy winner will replace Heather Headley, who took over from the celebrated revival’s…

EXCLUSIVE: Everywhere you look today, some “disruptive” creative type is rolling out his or her “passion project,” and far be it from Broadway to elude the trend. Give a pass to Scottish director John Doyle, however. He’s been bringing Broadway passion projects marked by a distinctly disruptive artistic impulse…

Despite a negligible dip in the overall Broadway box office last week, several shows had reason to cheer through the January blahs. Three musicals showed significant (i.e. >$100K) gains over the week before, including lauded newcomer The Color Purple, at the Shubert Organization’s Bernard Jacobs Theatre. The John…

Chi-Raq, Spike Lee's film about gang violence in Chicago, features Jennifer Hudson as Irene–a mother whose young daughter is killed. This was an especially difficult role for Hudson on a personal level, because her mother, brother and nephew were victims of Chicago gun crime in 2008. As Hudson says, "I was definitely…

The week before Christmas brought less-than-cheery tidings to Broadway. Not only was the overall tally of $29.48 million down 1 percent  from the previous week, but a season-on-season comparison shows a 6 percent drop from last December, when 36 shows were running (compared with the current 37). Average ticket price…

For better or worse, 2015 has been the year of Hamilton … and everything else (so what’s not to like about that?).  Yet it’s been a remarkable time — for immigrant stories freshly minted and revisited on Broadway, for adventurous new plays, thoughtful revivals and, in at least one case, a rediscovered gem (In White Ame…

Here is one of the great triumphal surprises in a Broadway season that has had its share of them: A revival of The Color Purple that lifts an already formidable musical into greatness just seven years after its initial run closed. Propelled by a pair of knockout performances from Jennifer Hudson and Cynthia Erivo…