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Whether it’s a giant chandelier crashing onto a stage,
or a giant tire taking a sacrificial cat to heaven,
Broadway is no stranger to spectacle.
While the average budget for a musical in New
York City’s theater district is around 8 to 12 million dollars,
every so often a show comes around that blows that number into the stratosphere.
However, sometimes bigger isn’t always better,
and often times the bigger the budget, the harder the fall.
Now there are a lot of musicals out there,
but for the purpose of this list, we’ll only be ranking the biggest budget original musicals
with all the numbers adjusted for inflation.
So, sorry Music Man revival, ya got trouble. Again.
I’m Brendon with Wait in the Wings,
and these are the Five Most Expensive Musicals in Broadway History.
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Now, let's dive in!
#5: Frozen
By 2018, Disney’s theatrical arm proved itself as a multi-billion dollar money maker.
Turning Frozen, the company's highest grossing animated film,
into a Broadway musical just made sense.
However, Frozen’s journey to the Great White Way was much more difficult
and costly than many of Disney’s other attempts.
The musical went through three choreographers, two different actresses playing Elsa,
two directors, and two set designers,
all before their first try-out run in Denver.
The show cost a total of 30 million dollars to stage, thanks in part to:
A 40 person cast
A 8,000 pound video wall with more than 7 million LED lights
19 projectors
300 costumes
And additional fees to stage the show in the St. James Theater, a venue that Disney doesn’t own.
After a disappointing showing at the Tony Awards and on the Billboard music charts,
it wasn’t very surprising that Frozen was one of the first musicals to be
left out in the cold when COVID hit.
While it never reached the same success as Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin,
it is believed that Frozen did recoup its capitalization
#4: Shrek
As the great poet once said, “Somebody once told me the world was gonna roll me,”
and when it came to Broadway, Jeffrey Katzenburg definitely got rolled.
Originally the head of Disney’s movie studio, Katzenburg left the company on bad terms in 1994
and decided to start his own animation company named DreamWorks.
The studio released a number of moderate successes,
but Shrek in 2001 was the company's first big hit.
Still fueled with resentment and wanting to take the fight to Disney,
Katzenberg and DreamWorks wanted to turn Shrek into a Broadway musical.
Mimicking the same formula that originally found Disney success,
DreamWorks recruited a theater dream team with a script by Pulitzer Prize
winner David Lindsay Abaire and revered composer Jeanine Tesori.
Shrek the Musical was a spectacle unlike anything Broadway had seen before with a giant set that
included three turntables, a 12 foot high magic mirror that was animated in real-time,
a 17 foot high dragon puppet, a giant bridge, a giant castle, and a giant ginger-bread man.
But the technical elements didn’t stop there. They also found their way into the costumes
via a mechanical nose for Pinocchio, mechanical ears for Donkey,
and heavy prosthetics for Shrek himself.
When all was said and done, the production reportedly cost 31.5 million dollars.
Even though Shrek the Musical received favorable reviews
and eight Tony nominations, the great recession really took a toll on the show,
as fewer families were spending money on Broadway tickets.
Failing to make more than its weekly running costs,
Shrek the Musical closed just a little over a year after it opened.
#3: King Kong
There was a 20 foot puppet. How couldn’t it be one of the most expensive shows in Broadway history?
Based on the 1933 film,
and the 1976 film,
and the 2005 film,
King Kong on Broadway always had one main selling point.
It was the puppet.
At 2,400 pounds of steel and styrofoam, the puppet wasn’t just the standout part of the show.
It was also a big reason for the lofty $36.5 million price tag.
The original plan was to move the show to New York in 2014,
a year after it originally opened in Australia.
With Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark finishing its run at the Foxwoods Theater,
the Kong team was ready to move in.
But, after multiple delays and changes in the creative team,
the musical wouldn’t actually open until November 8th, 2018.
During the Australia run, critics loved the puppet,
but weren’t favorable towards the actual script or story.
Unsurprisingly, the critics in the States felt the same way.
Producers were hopeful that opening the show so close to the Christmas season
would bring in more tourist traffic, thus helping them outpace the negative reviews.
But, on August 18th, 2019, with over $700,000 weekly running costs,
and empty hands after the Tony awards, money ultimately killed the beast.
#2: The Lion King
Have you ever driven by a Ruby Tuesday and just thought “Whoa! That thing's still open?”
If so, then you basically know what it’s like walking past The Lion King on Broadway.
The only difference is, The Lion King
still consistently brings in over $2 million dollars a week.
After the success of Beauty and the Beast,
Disney was approached to get involved in New York City’s efforts to clean up Times Square.
Though reluctant at first,
Disney eventually purchased the New Amsterdam theater on 42nd street.
Once the home of Ziegfeld's Follies,
the immaculate interior was now eroded and run over with decay.
As the company worked to secure tax breaks and financial support from the city,
Disney CEO Michael Eisner eventually decided what the theater's first show would be:
The Lion King.
Eisner knew Disney couldn’t get away with another “theme park show” like Beauty and the Beast,
and wanted The Lion King to be more abstract and unpredictable.
The last thing he wanted was a literal recreation of the movie on stage.
The heads of the theater division, Peter Schneider and Thomas Schumacher,
made a call to experimental theatre director Julie Taymor.
Taymor was as avante garde as they come and she had to give periodic presentations to Disney execs
just to ensure her creative vision didn’t fall out of line with the company's values.
After Taymor pitched a radical idea where Simba got corrupted by a bunch of half-human,
half-animal inhabitants in a Sahara style Las Vegas, Schumacher told Taymor,
“I don’t want to do your version. But if your version is really important to you,
then I guess we’re at the place where we don’t do this together”.
Ultimately, Taymor abandoned the Las Vegas idea
and instead leaned into the South African style of the original film.
She infused the musical with colorful abstract sets,
dozens of hand-sculpted masks, and 232 puppets.
When it opened on November 13, 1997, The Lion King easily clinched the top
spot as Broadway’s most expensive show, coming in at a cost of $36.9 million.
The musical went on to earn Disney its first Tony Award
and Julie Taymor made history as the first woman to win the Best Director Tony.
25 years after its debut on Broadway, The Lion King still plays to near-full
houses and has brought in over $1 billion globally.
Hakuna Matata, am I right?
#1: Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark
Did you ever have any doubts?
If Lion King was a testament to what Taymor could do under supervision,
then Spider-Man was a warning of what could happen when she was totally unleashed.
Considering Spider-Man was the first time David Garfinkle ever produced a show,
he lacked the experience and ability to put his foot down on creative decisions.
As a result, Taymor transformed the simple comic book tale
into an elaborate greek myth complete with a Geek Chorus, seamstress acrobats,
and Arachne trying to get Peter Parker to sleep with her.
When it came to the actual web swinging,
Taymor wanted the actors to literally fly over the top of the audience.
The Foxwoods Theater underwent costly renovations to install a giant automated track that mimicked
what the NFL uses for their flying cameras, with each flight track programmed to a certain actor.
They also planned for a 1 million dollar spider web net that would
have draped across the audience for the actors to fight on in the finale.
Ultimately, the plan was scrapped...
but not until after the net was already made.
Even without the web net,
there were still huge sets that flipped and folded like a giant pop-up book,
colossal video screens, and, lest we forget, the gigantic baby cut out!?
As Taymor unrelentingly leaned into the spectacle,
Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark continued to get more expensive.
After initial delays due to lack of funds, a bunch of loans, and The Great Recession,
the budget for the show ballooned.
When the musical finally opened, the $30 million budget had transformed into a $76 million circus.
Even though Spider-Man pulled in great box office numbers,
the astronomical $1,000,000 a week in running costs
were way too high for the show to sustain itself.
And it eventually spun its final web at a $60 million loss to investors.
The story of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark is an odyssey in its own right,
So, you can click on this video to learn more of 10 of the wildest stories
from the doomed musical’s backstage history.