The New York Times: A quarter century is about twice as long as the life span of your average wild lion. But there’s nothing average about “The Lion King.”
In the years since it opened on Broadway, the musical, thanks to 27 productions that have filled 112 million seats and have played on every continent but Antarctica, has grossed nearly $10 billion, more than any other stage show and more than any film.
4 comments:
I think it is crazy how long the Lion King has been on Broadway and been able to maintain such success. I also think it is impressive how wide the show's reach has been, performing in multiple different countries in multiple languages. I definitely think part of its success is due to it being part of the disney circuit and having the disney influence. I do love the musical and love to see the celebration of the people behind the scenes. Julie Taymor is definitely iconic for just being the first woman to win a tony for directing. Seeing her sketches for initial concepts and seeing how she realized the process is definitely very impressive as well. I am excited to see just how long this show and the legacy of the Lion King is going to continue especially since it has been so cemented into so many people's childhoods. I am also curious to see if any other shows will ever gain as much notoriety as the Lion King has.
I was happy to see this article show up and my immediate thought was of Julie Taymor. In another class we have been reading the “Song of Spiderman” book about the flop Turn Off the Dark, which she was also a part of. This article lays out the positives of her impact but her experience with Spiderman will always be in the back of my mind. I knew the show made a lot of money but to see the numbers listed out was really jarring. The amount of people who have seen this show over the years, and continue to, is mind-boggling. It's been on an insane amount of tours. I love the detail that former child actors joined in on the celebration. I'm sure that anniversary show was super exciting. It was nice to read some of the oral history excerpts. This is truly a case study on long running art and something I'd be interested to study more.
It is interesting, before this semester I had only known of Julie Taymor’s name because of her connection to the Lion King. However, I had no clue that she was the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing a musical. After reading Glen Berger’s book The Song of Spiderman, I definitely saw Julie in another light. She was someone who was once praised and awarded for having an “uncompromising vision” like for her work with the Lion King Musical, but for Spiderman that same unwillingness to collaborate ultimately led to her being asked to leave as director. I’m curious how her success with one thing shaped her work ethic for future projects. I had no clue the history of how the wildly successful Lion King Musical came to be and it was kind of a shock that Julie had never even seen it before being approached about it.
This article is so fascinating to me because, like Virginia and Megan talked about, the SMPMs read “Song of Spiderman” by Glen Gerber in seminar. Just the wild difference in tone from this article to the book, and how phenomenal The Lion King has been and how.. Not so phenomenal the Spiderman musical was. But, you can see the similarities. Taymour had her hands all over every aspect of the creation of this musical - the puppets, the story, the writing, the costumes. They went with the “hint” idea where they didn’t try to make everything seem realistic, but the humanimals were meant to give the audience a guiding hand in following the story. Spiderman though? They wanted flying fights and webs shooting out and city buildings. Very clear, no hints. I hope to see The Lion King musical someday soon, but goodness I can’t think about it without thinking about the Spiderman musical now!
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