Photo Flash: THE LION KING Celebrates 7000 Performances; Meet the New Cast

Disney's landmark musical event, The Lion King, will play its 7,000th Broadway performance at 7:00pm on Wednesday, September 3rd. Only three shows in Broadway history have reached this milestone.

As it approaches its 17th anniversary on Broadway, The Lion King finds itself in a position unprecedented in the history of Broadway. Already the highest-grossing show in Broadway history, the show was the highest-grossing of 2013 and is routinely the #1 Broadway show in a given week, a feat previously unimaginable for a show at this stage in its life.

THE LION KING was the first show in Broadway history to pass $1 billion in cumulative gross, a threshold also crossed by the North American tour and most recently the Hamburg production.

There are ten concurrent worldwide productions of The Lion King, the highest number of productions running at any one time in the show's history. Five of those productions have been running for 10 years or longer, an accomplishment shared by only one other show in history. Two new productions have recently been announced for Mexico City's Telcel Theatre and the new Walt Disney Grand Theatre at Shanghai Disney Resort.

Among the most successful titles in entertainment history, The Lion King's worldwide footprint is remarkable. With a cumulative gross approaching $6 billion, the title has already earned more than the biggest hit films in movie history: more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy combined, more than all 23 James Bond films combined, and more than Avatar andTitanic, the two highest-grossing films in movie history, combined.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus