UPDATE, with full report: Broadway had its best attended and highest grossing Thanksgiving week in the industry’s recorded history, the Broadway League said today, with its 38 productions grossing a combined $46,046,759, a huge increase over last year’s turkey holiday take of $34,512,033.
Attendance for this year’s Thanksgiving week – the Broadway week ending December 1 – was 312,143, compared to last year’s Thanksgiving week attendance of 228,711.
The top grosser for this year’s holiday week was, no surprise, Wicked, the 21-year-old Broadway musical getting a renewed boost of interest from the blockbuster movie version out now. The Broadway musical grossed $2,930,221, handily topping the #2 entry on the chart (The Lion King, $2,883,276) and #3 (Hamilton $2,579,544).
Four productions were sold out: Oh, Mary!, Romeo + Juliet, The Outsiders and Wicked, while 13 filled at least 95% of their seats: & Juliet, Aladdin, Back To The Future, Death Becomes Her, Elf, Hadestown, Hamilton, Moulin Rouge!, Once Upon a Mattress (in its final week, taking a big $1,025,433), Stereophonic, Suffs, The Book of Mormon and The Lion King.
Shows grossing at least $1M (but less than $2M) for the week were: & Juliet, Aladdin, Back To The Future, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, Death Becomes Her, Elf, Gypsy ($1.6M for seven previews), Hadestown, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hell’s Kitchen, MJ, Moulin Rouge!, Oh, Mary!, Once Upon a Mattress, Romeo + Juliet, Six (with a nine-performance week), Sunset Blvd., The Book of Mormon, The Great Gatsby and The Outsiders.
With its $1,840,606 take for eight performances, The Outsiders scored its best ever week at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, surpassing even the venue’s nine-performance week record.
Some shows didn’t quite get a big share of the holiday pie, with the excellent Swept Away grossing only $412,182 and filling only 61% of seats at the Longacre; and Tammy Faye, nearing its early December 8 closing, grossed a measly $259,515, with attendance at just 38% of the Palace’s capacity. Other shows posting b.o. slips for the week were A Wonderful World, Left on Tenth, The Hills of California, and The Roommate (which had a shortened pre-scheduled six-performance week).
Sunset Blvd. was off a tad, from the previous week’s $1.87M to Thanksgiving week’s $1.82M, with about 90% of seats filled at the St. James.
Maybe Happy Ending showed some verve, jumping $116,215 over the previous week to $707,628 and filling 88% of seats at the Belasco. Maybe happy word of mouth is finally starting to kick in.
Season to date, Broadway, in the 28th week of the 2024-25 season, has grossed $906,440,409, up about 13% over last year at this time, with total attendance of 7,346,891 also up about 13%. (The Thanksgiving holiday did not fall within Week 28 last year, but rather Week 27.)
All figures courtesy of The Broadway League. For complete box office listings, visit the League’s website.