The Broadway musical Beetlejuice had some rocky weeks this year at the box office, but it recently had a big turnaround and has become a huge hit… though this is sadly not enough to save the show.
The show will be ending its Broadway run on June 6, 2020 as the owners of the Winter Garden Theatre are forcing it to leave to make room for the upcoming production of The Music Man, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.
“It’s sad and a shame, and also, in its own way, historic,” co-producer Hal Luftig told the New York Times. “I don’t think there’s ever been a case when a show has turned itself around in such a fashion and then has to leave its theater.”
The producers of Beetlejuice are hoping to find another theater, but a move for a show as elaborate as Beetlejuice is extremely expensive. The show’s investors likely won’t make their money back now as the June closing date won’t allow for enough time to recoup the full $21 million capitalization.
“It’s disappointing,” said Mark Kaufman, the executive vice president of Warner Bros. Theater Ventures. “We took the time and we built a hit, and now we’re going to have our life at this theater cut short.”
The Shubert Organization, which is the company that owns the Winter Garden Theatre, has something in all contracts called a “stop clause” that will allow them to kick a show out of its theater if the show’s grosses fall below a certain level for two weeks in a row. Beetlejuice hit its stop clause in June 2019, before the big rebound. At that time, the Shuberts agreed to let The Music Man open in the theater over a year later.
You can buy tickets now to see Beetlejuice on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre through June 6!
