Should Newsies Go From A Tabloid To A Broadsheet?

[Phantom of London]

Sorry about the cheesy metaphor^

With every single show of Newsies sold out and plenty of the bigger houses empty on Broadway, such as the Nederlander group, Neil Simon, maybe The Richard Rodgers and maybe The Lunt Fontanne will be free soon.

As I said with every show of Newsies sold out and with days like Tuesday to Thursday sold out you can bet your bottom dollar that demand for 'peak' shows (Friday - Sunday) will be at least double or treble what they can sell now and if ticketing does slow down they can do the old get out of jail card such as; 'TKTs' or School groups.

The restrooms are also very small at the Nederlander Theater and with a kids friendly show, you know what kids are like!

Should Newsies move to a bigger Broadway theater?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

No.

[ucjrdude902]

They should have went into a bigger theatre from the get go. To shut down for a week or two and then move could hurt them I'd assume.

[aasjb4ever]

This is the exact conversation as The Book of Mormon last year: Show is a hit, in the summer people scratch their heads as to why it doesn’t transfer to a larger house, same reason. It’s an economics lesson: Scarcity (limited tickets in a small house) is natural. Shortages (limited tickets in a large house) are man-made.

[Jonwo]

The show's doing great and it could harm them moving to a bigger theatre, it'll run for a while running at the 1200 seater Nederlander.

[bwayphreak234]

No. I never see the logic behind this.

[macnyc]

Is Newsies really sold out? How far into the future, do you think?

[JohnyBroadway]

I think it's better to have a high ticket demand and a smaller house, than having to fill the new Amsterdam or something.

[qolbinau]

They have a current discount code for Monday-Wednesday performances, and I think it would be difficult to claim that there are literally two-three times the amount of people wishing to catch the show on Friday-Saturday shows than the theatre will currently allow. Plus, it isn't selling out literally months in advance (e.g. there are still many orchestra seats, most premium and front side mezz (or rear mezz seats, can't remember) for a Saturday night performance 11 days from now). This is no BOOK OF MORMON. It seems to be a perfect combination of demand/theatre size to me..

[CapnHook]

Could it make more money in a larger house? Sure. But after the summer, it will be more difficult to fill that larger house.

Also, outlook for the upcoming season has a "family-friendly" juggernaut of a competitor: ANNIE. If a family has to make a choice of only one show, you can bet your bottom dollar that it'll be ANNIE over NEWSIES. And then later down the pipeline, there's MATILDA.

I wonder what age groups WANT to see NEWSIES? I would think older teens and up. Not kids. Not even a strong number of tweens. Parents would want WICKED, THE LION KING, or ANNIE over NEWSIES -- a film they never heard of, most likely.

I think NEWSIES only has the life of around 3 years on Broadway. I'd say that is a fair bet until we see what kind of numbers the show can pull in after ANNIE and MATILDA opens.

[Phantom of London]

Book Of Mormon operates on a 'dynamic' pricing, so every show needs to be sold out for this business to work. Mormon was offered The St James early in the Mormon, but turned it down flat.

You wouldn't need to close Newsies for it to move theater, you could build brand new sets and lighting for the 'new bigger' theater and the use the old set from the Nederlander theatre for the 1st national tour.

Annie and Matilta being a threat to the box office of Newsies is a excellent point.

[jimmycurry01]

Build brand new sets and lighting? Are you insane? That would cost even more than closing and moving. These shows want to break even eventually. It is a business with investors.

Would you really want to overlap rent for two theatres? Would you want to pay the designers to come back and redesign for the new space? That is a scenic designer, a sound designer, and lighting designer. They make top dollar. Would you want to cough up the several million for the new larger set? Then you also have to pay people to build the sets and hang and focus the lights. When the Lion King did this a few years back it was a big expensive ordeal. They had been running long enough at near capacity (almost a decade) to be able to afford it.

You have to think about these things like a producer. Take supply and demand into consideration, weigh out the options, and know you are way better off where you are. Limited seats, in a smaller theatre means a higher demand and cheaper rent. You can stay open longer in a smaller theatre, and make more money in the long run.

[CapnHook]

And above all else, Disney has the BRAND to protect. It's reputation is equally important as money. Why RISK their success by trying to squeeze out a few more dollars when they're doing just fine right now. Hell, they didn't even PLAN to bring this to Broadway, it was always a "We'll see once we're at PAPERMILL." The surprise success of NEWSIES is a bonus.

[bdn223]

Early in its run, meaning prior to Disney finally announcing Newsies was going to become an open ended run, I would have said yes. Now though it has momentum and I don't think Disney wants to risk it.

As I have said before in previous threads, Disney had their pick of any theater for Newsies since the Neaderlanders were begging for a transfer, except for one, the Lunt, since Ghost had "claimed" the theater in August of last year. So if Newsies was to move I think it would be the Lunt. The Lunt is a theater Disney occupied for nearly 10 years, and is in my opinion has the best location with the exception of the Palace and possibly the Marquee, before it moved its box office. The Lunt is the only theater on its side of the street allowing its Marquee to stand out unlike the rest of the theaters in the area of 44th-46th. Its maybe 30ft from Time Sqare. The show has a capacity of 1500, making it on the bigger size of the mid size theaters, but not so big that it becomes scarcity becomes unlikely. For example most of the shows that have played the Lunt have gone through a period of selling out the hosue for months. (Beauty and the Beast, Mermaid during its initial and final summer, and Addams Family for the first 6 months).

At this point I think the likelyhood of Newsies moving theaters is highly unlikely. If Newsies was to move it would have announced it alongside it's open ended extension. By that point or even by the week after the Tonys the only shows to post closings were in Shubert/independent houses. JCSS only posted two weeks ago, Ghost is holding on for dear life, and Disney wouldn't evict Peter and the Starcatcher a show their making money on, especially since it is in a smaller house. As I have said before Disney was probably hoping for Ghost or even JCSS to flop, but both shows producers had too much pride to accept the fact that shows were flops and rather than cutting their looses. They kept burying money in hopes a money tree would grow from the ground. I will say though that even if JCSS posted earlier I don't think Newsies would have moved into the Neil Simon, because even though it is less than 200 seats larger than the Neaderlander it is also on the edge of the theater district. Yes the Neaderlander is on the southern edge of the theater district, but 41st also has a ton of foot traffic from port authority, it is across the street from the New Amsterdam, and it is only 2/3 blocks from Time Square, compared to the 5 blocks for the Neil Simon. Considering the fact that Newsies only sells out day of show, foot traffic is key which the Neil Simon doesn't have.

If Newsies had won Best Musical, a move would have been more likely. Also with Matilda and Annie waiting in the wings, Disney most certainly does not want to risk loosing any momentum with Newsies, since all three shows are family friendly and have similar plot of kids rising up against adults who mistreat them. Though I would say Annie's threat is more imminent not only because it's opening in November, but it is a well know property. If Annie gets mixed to positive reviews it will likely become the "it" show of the season. Matilda is more tricky because it is a very British show, and unlike Mary Poppins the source material is not an American classic. The book Matilda is not as well known as the movie, which was extremely Americanized, which is what RSC said they would not do to Matilda in the transfer which won't hurt it with the press, but possibly its audience. One Man Two Guvnors had the same fear of being too British for a New York audience, but 1M2G is also not show marketing to a family audience.
So to answer your question, I do not think Newsies will be transferring theaters.



**Oh and a better metaphor for the title of this thread would be, "Now that Newsies is King of New York, will it move into a theater fit for a King?"

[Kelly2]

Non.

[Bwaydide92]

Will ANNIE really pose that much of a threat. In my experience, it's become more of a joke with younger theatre goers and is almost cringe worthy whenever mentioned. I feel like the audience will be mostly advent theatre people, but if I were a tourist or anyone born in the last 25 years would see the marquee and laugh. I've heard that it has a bad reputation and it's actually really good, but when people think about ANNIE they think of the annoying little girl singing Tomorrow. It just seems like people would avoid it like the plague.

I think NEWSIES will be much more desirable for families and other theatre-goers.

[TheatreKid3]

I loathe ANNIE with the passion of 1,000 dying Suns. It is probably the MOST done to death regional show in MTI's catalogue. With that being said, I'm sure it will find a new audience of young girls, but I don't think it will pose a huge threat to NEWSIES.

Also, I don't think NEWSIES should move at this point. Besides money, the only major reason is because of the Nederlander's horrible sight lines for the show, but that is going to happen in any theatre because of the show's design. However, if it were to ever move to another theatre I'd say it would only be the Lunt. I'd say Disney is dying to have it back.

[Jonwo]

I'm sure Newsies could move without much if any changes as I think the set were designed so it could easily constructed whenever it was licensed to regional theatres but TBH I think Newsies should and will stay put at the Nederlander, it suits the show which is an odd thing to say but I couldn't imagine it in a bigger theatre.

[TheatreKid3]

I agree! It is odd, but the first thing I thought when reports started saying the show was rumored to open at the Nederlander, my first though was: "That Theatre is perfect for it!" It does suit it very well.

[jimmycurry01]

I am confused by your post Jonwo. Are you suggesting that you think they would send the set to regional theatres? Because that would never happen. Regional theatres hire their own design team and perform their on productions.

[TheatreKid3]

He means that the scenic design can be easily replicated in similar fashion for regional theatres as opposed to most broadway designs.

[Phantom of London]

**Oh and a better metaphor for the title of this thread would be, "Now that Newsies is King of New York, will it move into a theater fit for a King?"**

That Isn't a cheesy metaphor, just plain cheesy.

"Would you really want to overlap rent for two theatres? Would you want to pay the designers to come back and redesign for the new space? That is a scenic designer, a sound designer, and lighting designer. They make top dollar. Would you want to cough up the several million for the new larger set? Then you also have to pay people to build the sets and hang and focus the lights. When the Lion King did this a few years back it was a big expensive ordeal. They had been running long enough at near capacity (almost a decade) to be able to afford it."

The big money in a show is the concept and design, if you were to do Spiderman again, the costs wouldn't be anywhere near $60m.
If you did the sets again, you only need to make them a bit bigger for the new theatre and I did say the sets from the Nederlander theater could be used for tour.

Someone said the merits of moving to the Lunt-Fontanne, which I thought would be a good idea and could mean Disney bank a extra $0.5m a week.