NYTimes.com: Broadway shows often rely on dozens of investors to finance their costly budgets. “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder,” for example, had 130 investors providing between $25,000 and $850,000 for a total capitalization of $7.5 million.
Let’s say you want to become a Broadway investor.
3 comments:
This is soooooo relevant. People don't realize 1) how much time, effort, and money goes into an evening of theatre and 2) how much of an actual gamble it is for shows to go up. The pressure of thousands, or millions, of dollars being used carefully and not wasted is a crazy responsibility for directors and producers.
It seems like more and more that Broadway is looking more like Wall Street banking. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just something that we have to take in and absorb. Broadway is obviously known as commercial theatre, but it has become more and more formulaic in its production. And to elaborate more on the connection to Wall Street, Broadway is now invest banking. You want to do your research before you invest in your product and you will probably want to know how much you are planning to put into this and getting a lawyer. Perhaps we may eventually see stock in Broadway.
One of my favorite musicals is The Producers and I think this in a comedic way sheds a bit of light on what goes into a show from the team's prospective. I think this article is really interesting though because it basically illuminates the other side. Unless you have actually personally invested in a broadway show, you probably have no idea about most of this stuff. Like I like to think that I know a lot about how broadway shows come together but I had no idea about all of the legal ramifications and rules that are in place for investors, like that the money must be raised by opening night. I thought it was much simpler, with people just negotiating their investment in an individual contract.
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