The boy wizard — actually, he’s all grown up now — triumphed in the worlds of books, movies and theme parks. But he’s having a tougher time on Broadway.
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the two-part play set 19 years after the conclusion of the final novel, has seen a steep drop in its box office performance.
Weekly grosses have plunged by more than 50% since their peak; last week, for the first time, the show’s weekly box office grosses slipped below $1 million, according to figures released Monday by the Broadway League.
The average ticket price is now just 47% of what it was a year ago. That’s good news for families and fans eager to see the show but challenging for the producers, who spent a record $35.5 million to capitalize the play and have been banking on a long, strong run to recoup those costs.
The show’s slump comes at a time when Broadway, which has been booming, is looking at a down season. Overall grosses are nearly 7% below where they were at this time last year, and the box office for several other big brand shows, including stage adaptations of “Frozen” and “Mean Girls,” have also drooped.
But “Cursed Child” stands out because of the scale of the investment — it cost more to bring to Broadway than any other nonmusical play — and because it is part of one of the most popular, and profitable, storytelling sagas in years.
The show imagines Harry Potter as a father, employed at the ministry of magic, and is centered on his relationship with his son, a student at Hogwarts. Written by Jack Thorne, based on a story by JK Rowling, John Tiffany and Thorne, it has plenty of plot twists, stage magic and shiver-inducing effects, and has been widely acclaimed; it won the Olivier Award for best new play in London, where it opened in 2016, and the Tony Award for best new play on Broadway, where it opened last year.
There are also productions running in Melbourne, Australia; and San Francisco and forthcoming in Hamburg, Germany; and Toronto.
But the show has a built-in challenge: It is being staged, and sold, as a two-parter, generally seen two nights in a row or in a matinee-plus-evening marathon. That means cost is a hurdle for some — to see both parts, you have to buy two tickets — while for others, the running time is daunting — Part 1 is 2 hours and 40 minutes, and Part 2 is 2 hours and 35 minutes.
“It’s a big time commitment, and for people who don’t go to theater all the time it seems like a really big time commitment,” said Victoria Bailey, executive director of the Theater Development Fund. “And there’s a perception that Broadway is really expensive, so unless you’re reaching people who want to go and telling them that there’s a price point that is manageable, there are people who assume ‘I can’t afford that.’ ”
The producers, who would answer questions only in writing, insist that they are not worried. Their weekly grosses are now near their weekly running costs, but they should rise over the coming weeks as Thanksgiving and the Christmas season bring more tourists to town.
“Given the two-part nature of this unique theater production, we always anticipated that there would be a time when the sales would level off, and we have now settled into a viable business-as-usual weekly sales pattern, if ‘business as usual’ is ever something that’s possible to say in the theater,” the lead producers, who include Rowling as well as Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, said in a statement. “Acknowledging that there is no road map for producing an open-ended run of a two-part play in NYC, we continue to learn all we can about positioning this remarkable and unique event in this particular market.”
One step the producers have taken is to cut prices, and they have done so effectively enough that the 1,622-seat Lyric Theater has remained fully sold out, week after week. The play is now a relative bargain — a ticket to one of the parts costs less, on average, than all but two shows currently running on Broadway.
“They’re making smart choices by varying prices and maintaining capacity,” said Mike Rafael, a ticketing analyst, who said the important question now is when and whether the “Cursed Child” grosses, which were above $2 million a week through most of last year but have fallen to about $1 million a week this fall, will level off. “I know people are concerned about the declines, but I’m more interested in how they settle.”
Producers redesigned the play’s marketing material to add an image of Harry Potter with a lightning bolt logo that has long been used to promote Potter books and films. They also added Rowling’s name, making it clear that she is behind the stage story.
The Potter imagery, linking the play to other Potter projects, supplants the distinctive child-in-a-nest image that had previously symbolized the play (giant nest sculptures are mounted on the New York theater). There is also new marketing copy that more firmly knits the play to other Potter stories, with language including “Back to Hogwarts” and “Sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”
The play is stepping up its pursuit of audiences, emailing potential ticket buyers about pricing options, and starting a television campaign that, for the first time, includes footage from the production — a strategic shift from the time of the show’s opening, when the producers encouraged patrons not to give away details by distributing #KeepTheSecrets buttons.
One night in September, the show took over nearly all advertising screens in Times Square. And this week, Scholastic, the company that publishes the Potter novels, is releasing a $39.99 behind-the-scenes gift book about the play, called “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: The Journey.”
There are some hints that enthusiasm for the Potter franchise may be cooling. The second “Fantastic Beasts” film performed less well than the first at the box office, and a third was delayed, although filming is now expected to begin next spring. Universal Studios Hollywood, where The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was added in 2016, has seen its attendance growth slowing. And sales of the script for “Cursed Child” have dropped at retailers in the United States over the last year, according to NPD BookScan.
Two-part plays have long been a tough sell on Broadway. The other two-part play this fall, “The Inheritance,” is doing only moderately in previews (last week it grossed $545,910, which is 44% less than “Cursed Child”). And other examples, a revival of “Angels in America” last year and “Wolf Hall” in 2015, both failed to recoup their investments at the box office.
“Splitting it into two parts maybe wasn’t the best idea for fans,” said Emma Pocock, a senior editor at the Leaky Cauldron, a Potter fan site. She also noted that the presence of multiple productions makes each one less urgent. “Maybe it’s spread out too thin,” she said.
New York is by far the costliest place to produce theater of all the cities in which “Cursed Child” is being staged. Other markets remain encouraged. David Mirvish, owner of the Toronto theater where the play is scheduled to start performances next fall and a co-producer of the Canadian production, said, “I wholeheartedly believe the play will be very successful here.”
This article originally appeared in
.