NYTimes.com: “Rocky” will go down for the count, giving its last performance at the Winter Garden Theater on Aug. 17, the producers announced on Tuesday.
The $15 million musical — based on the hugely popular 1976 film about a small-time boxer, played by Sylvester Stallone, beating long odds to fight for the heavyweight crown — will have run for 28 previews and 188 regular performances when it closes.
2 comments:
Rocky seemed like it was going to be a hit back when it was first in previews. I thought it looked like a great show. The producers must have really thought so if they kicked out a huge show like Mamma Mia to make space for these guys. The theater is all about gambles. It is just like any other industry in the sense that it is a business and that you’re in it to make money (unless your not on Broadway). If you are not making money than you better quit while you’re ahead. That said, sometimes it can be hard to tell what the outcome will be until it becomes clear later on into the shows run that you will not be making back your money and the show cannot run for as long as you originally thought it would. That is just part of the business. I thought Rocky seemed like a good show and I’m sad to see that it will be closing so soon but that is just the way this business works.
This, similar to the previous article on Tupac Shakur’s musical, is just another example of a show trying to access a new target audience without reaching out to them first. Clearly we have some competent people on the artistic team, as they were very successful together with “Hairspray” and “The Producers,” but with those shows they were going out of the box content wise, while still appealing to similar audiences that Broadway already had. What exactly does a young man gain from spending $200 to watch a musical on boxing instead of seeing an actual boxing match? What does the musical give that the film it’s based on doesn’t? When marketing for your show you have to explain why your target audience, or anyone at all, should be interested in the show before you open the show. You just can’t expect a whole new group of people to be interested in your project without proper marketing.
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