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The holiday season boosted Broadway box office for the week ending December 29, with a spate of weekly records established by shows including West Side Story, Beetlejuice, a couple of bio-musicals and others.
Total grosses came in at $55,765,408, according to the trade group Broadway League. That was about $2 million lower than the tally for the same week a year ago but well ahead of the $40.6 million taken in last week.
The long-anticipated revival of West Side Story broke the all-time Broadway Theatre house record for a single week, grossing a bit more than $1.8 million in eight performances. It was the second consecutive weekly house record and also the top week for any production of the show in its 62-year Broadway history. The show began previews in early December and will hold its official opening February 20, following a two-week delay necessitated by an on-stage knee injury suffered by lead actor Isaac Powell. Scott Rudin, Barry Diller and David Geffen are producing.
Temptations musical Ain’t Too Proud gathered up nearly $1.9 million, breaking its own house record at the Imperial. The Tina Turner biomusical Tina again broke the house record at the Lunt-Fontanne, with a gross of nearly $2.3 million from nine performances. Beetlejuice climbed to nearly $2.2 million, a record at the Winter Garden.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child grossed more than $2 million in each of its exclusive U.S. runs. In San Francisco, it set a city record for the highest-grossing week for a play, pulling in just shy of $2.1 million. And at Broadway’s Lyric Theatre, the show reported ticket sales of $2.05 million. The Tony winner for Best Play is the best-selling straight play in Broadway history, with $163,017,626 collected to date.
Waitress, which will close January 5, had its best week at the box office in over a year, grossing $1.27 million at the Brooks Atkinson.
While total box office for the 2019-20 season is running 6% behind that of 2018-19, the attendance for calendar-year 2019 has set a new record, the League said, with 14.62 million tickets punched. On a gross basis, the year still trailed 2018 by about $67 million, though last year had more “playing weeks,” enabling it to take in more revenue.