Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has set a Broadway record for weekly ticket sales for a non-musical play, reporting a gross of $2,718,487.50 for the week ending Sunday. It was one of several high marks achieved for Main Stem shows in 2023’s final box office frame.
The Harry Potter gross passed the high mark originally set the week ending January 1, 2023 ($2,671,191). It is also a house record for the play’s home the Lyric Theatre.
The Tony-winning play has sold more than 10 million tickets worldwide since its July 2016 premiere and is Broadway’s most successful non-musical play with more than $330 million in total sales. A North American tour is set to launch in September 2024 in Chicago.
Over at the Ambassador Theatre, Broadway’s longest-running musical Chicago grossed weekly sales of $1,452,008.50, beating last year’s final week’s $1,299,4004.24. Producers said gross ticket sales for the nine-performance week ending December 31 were the largest in the show’s history; that span included the December 28 show, which grossed $173,415.75, topping the best single-show mark achieved a few evenings earlier on Christmas.
Also setting show records the week ending December 31: the musical Six, which grossed $1,659,004.00 and played to an average capacity of 100.74% at the Lena Horne Theatre, producers said.
The holiday numbers are good news for the industry overall. While shows such as Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd, The Lion King, Wicked, I Need That and newcomer Appropriate filled seats during the week ending December 17, total box office receipts were down about 16% year over year in that frame. Part of the reasons: there were 26 productions on the boards this December, compared to 34 in December 2022.
Final stats will come later this week.
