The next big musical to hit the stage is undoubtedly Frozen which is set to open on Broadway in February 2018 following a try out run in Denver, which has just begun. It is set to be a huge success, following the box office smash film which opened in cinemas in 2013. So will the musical version be the next Hamilton or Harry Potter and leave fans waiting years in order to secure tickets because of its popularity, or is it possible it could be the flop of the century?
It is hard to gage how well a show is selling on Broadway because so many people buy tickets and resell them on the official websites. For instance, I just had a quick look and there are tickets being resold for $1400 each for some of the early performances of Frozen. If you want to go and see Hamilton on Broadway, you are looking at paying upwards of $2500 for a single ticket because of the way reselling is allowed to happen. London have cracked down on rules around ticket selling for shows like Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, forbidding the resale of tickets and only allowing them to be collected as you enter the auditorium on the date of the performance you have booked, showing identification and using the card you paid with at the time. It is amusing to consider that a person living in New York would find it cheaper to book flights and accommodation for a week long stay in London if they bought standard priced tickets here, rather than paying the single cost of resold tickets on Broadway.
Hamilton opens in London this November and all tickets available for the first eight months of the run completely sold out on the first day they went on sale. It will be interesting to see how the next round of tickets that go on sale (Autumn 2017) sell and if it’s in a similar manner or if all those buying in to the hype of the show now have their tickets, meaning sales slow down.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened in London in July 2016 and the initial run sold out immediately. A further 60,000 tickets went on sale in November 2016 and again sold out almost straight away, taking the show up to July 2018. Over the past few months, tickets have been reappearing for sale on the official website for many shows, but the majority of these tickets are premium and come with a hefty price tag. However, there are tickets out there if you are willing to pay for them.
So does it matter what these shows are really like? Does it matter what critics and audience members think or are some shows guaranteed to sell based on the hype they are given? I mean, Hamilton could be the worst show London has ever seen (I’m sure it won’t be) but it will still be a success because the entire run so far is already sold out and I imagine more tickets will go on sale before the show even opens its doors in London. So can Frozen fail at the box office? Probably not, people will flock to see it regardless (myself included).
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts on social media Facebook Twitter or you can email me wilma@westendwilma.com.
