By Jennifer R Jones | Posted on July 21, 2017 9:07 AM
Wicked has become the second most lucrative show across Broadway history, surpassing The Phantom of the Opera, but still lags behind The Lion King.
Surpasses “Phantom of the Opera,” Still Behind “The Lion King”

“Wicked” Reached One Billion Dollars Faster than Any Other Show

While it looks unlikely for Wicked to surpass The Lion King anytime soon, given that the latter had an 11 year head start, Wicked did beat The Lion King in terms of one record. Over a year ago, Wicked reached the milestone of crossing the $1 billion gross revenue mark for the Broadway production, earning that figure in 12.5 years, while it took The Lion King 16 years to achieve the same honor. It is true that the Broadway industry has been snowballing in recent years, with the advent of dynamic pricing and general inflation, so in that regard, Wicked has an advantage of beginning performances more recently, and thus having a greater portion of its time on Broadway be in the more lucrative years. In any case, these figures only refer to the Broadway productions, but Wicked is significantly more profitable than that. The global figure for Wicked, taking into account other national and international productions, is approximately $4 billion. This makes Wicked one of the most lucrative properties for one of its producers, Universal Pictures, even compared to its film properties. In fact, The Lion King became the highest grossing global intellectual property in any medium as of 2013, when it grossed over $6.2 billion worldwide. These examples prove that, at least in the extreme cases, theatre can be an extremely good investment, in some cases even more so than film. Wicked is officially a global smash hit, and the Broadway production has earned another achievement to add to its hefty register of success.