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It’s hard out there for new Broadway musicals.
Of the two that have opened so far this season, one, the atrocious, $22.5 million “Queen of Versailles” starring Kristin Chenoweth, has already gotten the guillotine.
And of the last 48 new Broadway musicals, just four have recouped their investment.
That’s 8.3%. Sheesh.
Not much is sticking around for long, and this week “Moulin Rouge!” announced it will close this summer after seven years at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. “Hell’s Kitchen,” at the Shubert, ends later this month.
Houses are freeing up. And even as spring is about to arrive, Broadway is looking much further ahead.
“After this current season of subpar new musicals, the industry has already moved on to thinking about next year,” a source working on a new musical said.
Here are a few shows planning to come to Broadway in 2026 and 2027.
‘Paddington‘
The big bear that’s eyeing the Hirschfeld, a source said, is “Paddington,” the family musical based on the children’s book about an adorable Peruvian furball who winds up in Britain.
“Sonia really wants to bring in ‘Paddington’,” a source said of British producer Sonia Friedman.
It’s easy to see why. In London’s West End, it’s a tough, tough ticket. Most performances are sold out, and there are only scattered seats available through September.
I enjoyed it a lot at the Savoy Theatre back in December. The songs by Tom Fletcher are sweet pop ballads with a sprinkle of “Matilda” wit.
And I was gobsmacked by the titular scamp — a brilliant combination of an actress inside a bear suit and an offstage performer who sings and remotely puppeteers Pad’s face. Incredible. More than a theme-park trick, the creature has a soul.
But does he have a shot?
A frequently asked question applies here: Is “Paddington” too British?
Most children in the States don’t grow up reading the books or, really, watching the wonderful movie series.
For example, last year the film “Paddington in Peru” grossed $5 million more in the UK ($49 million) than in the US — and we’re six times Britain’s size.
It’s certainly a risk. “Paddington” will be enormously expensive and need to run a long, long time to make a buck. After all, marmalade alone can’t pay the bills.
‘Evita‘
If you’ve walked by the St. James Theatre the past several months, you might have noticed something odd: a big blue poster for a production that is not playing in New York — “Evita” starring Rachel Zegler.
In fact, the hit revival is not even playing London’s Palladium anymore. It closed in September.
Andrew Lloyd Webber enjoys that sort of grand gesture. He took out a full page ad in the New York Times for the West End’s “Cinderella” nearly two years before it came to Broadway and was rechristened “Bad Cinderella.” Truer words…
Well, his very good, very loud “Evita,” directed by Jamie Lloyd of “Sunset Boulevard” and starring the revelatory Zegler, will chart the same course. It’s coming to the Winter Garden Theatre next year, multiple sources said, after Lloyd’s much-praised London production of “Much Ado About Nothing” opens there first.
Lloyd’s big flourish this time is that Zegler sings “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” to a huge crowd outside the theater, while ticket buyers watch a livestream. What a stunner — and a roadblock.
There aren’t many theaters in Midtown where a few hundred people can easily loiter outside for an hour. But the wide open sidewalk in front of Paramount Plaza, across the street from the Winter Garden, should do the trick.
‘Dolly: A True Original Musical‘
Never count out Dolly Parton. Word of mouth on her bio-musical, “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” was poisonous after it tried out in Nashville last summer.
Critics weren’t invited to see it in Music City, but an unimpressed opening-night spy said, “Instead of Broadway, the better move is for it to run in a drag bar in Vegas.”
Ouch.
But there will be no Fremont Street for Dolly. Sources say Parton’s jukebox show, in which she is played by three different actresses at various stages of her life, still plans to come to New York next season.
“It’s on track,” one said.
The book, which insiders criticized for being cheesy and longwinded, is being worked on.
Team “Dolly” is hoping the tide’s gonna turn and it’s all gonna roll their way.
‘Galileo: A Rock Musical‘
Considering Broadway’s last megahit was a hip-hop show about the secretary of the treasury, you can’t casually dismiss a musical just because it’s about an Italian astronomer who died in 1642.
That’s “Galileo,” which is aiming for Broadway next season.
“‘Galileo’ believes they are finally coming,” a source said of producer Jordan Roth, director Michael Mayer, book writer Danny Strong and composers Michael Weiner and Zoe Sarnak.
When it premiered at Berkeley Rep in California in 2024, critics were baffled.
Variety called the musical starring Raúl Esparza “an odd mixture of earnestness, flash and snark made odder by a score that trades in bombastic power-ballad sounds reminiscent of Jefferson Starship, Styx and Jim Steinman.”
Suffice it to say, “Galileo” needs some work to become magnifico-oh-oh-oh.
Of course, back in 2023 the LA Times said “The Outsiders” was “somewhat wobbly” when it premiered in La Jolla. That show went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical, and it recently became a member of that lucky 8.3% — a hit.
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