If you want to know why film and record companies are eager to develop their catalogues into Broadway musicals, look no further than the recent announcement that “Wicked,” produced and developed by Universal Pictures and David Stone, has grossed $1 billion in New York City alone. The Broadway production, which opened to divided notices in 2003, passed this marker in just a dozen plus years, besting the record of the two shows, “The Lion King” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” which are also members of this enviable club. It took “Phantom,” the global mega-smash trailblazer, twenty-seven years after its 1988 bow to reach $1 billion while “The Lion King” took sixteen.However you get there, it’s impressive, especially when you consider that the Broadway gross is part of a $4 billion total in tickets sales around the world for “Wicked.” And, averaging a weekly gross of nearly $2 million, there are no signs that it is slowing down. Ditto for “The Phantom of the Opera,” which boasts cumulative sales of over $6 billion, and “The Lion King,” which at $6.2 billion holds the record for the most successful entertainment entity in history. By comparison, the highest-grossing film of all-time, “Avatar,” stands at a measly $2.8 billion.The show is a testament to smart producing (Marc Platt headed the production for Universal). Platt and Stone assembled a polished team, including director Joe Mantello, book writer Winnie Holzman, and, most crucially, composer Stephen Schwartz. The latter, a wunderkind who, in his twenties, came up with “Godspell” and “Pippin,” was able to coach Holzman in the difficult craft of adapting Gregory Maguire’s clever best-seller about the evolution of the Wicked Witch of the West, inspired by Frank L. Baum’s beloved “Oz” series. Mantello has been frank about the show’s rocky development, especially during its San Francisco tryout. But the hot-tempered tensions among the creative team eventually reaped gold.That was buoyed by the fact that the material itself satisfied the dual need for spectacle and emotional catharsis. The green-tinctured but empathetic Elphaba discovers empowerment, true love, and sisterly affection, and defies gravity to boot. And there are nice twists and turns on this not-so-yellow brick road. The show enhanced the star power of its leads, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, and while it won three of its 10 Tony nominations, it lost the top prize to “Avenue Q,” which was less a backlash than affection for a little engine. Still, it was something of a bitter night for the “Wicked” team, captured in the riveting Dori Berinstein documentary, “Show Business: The Road to Broadway” (2007).Also key to the success of “Wicked” has been the tight rein on quality control and attention to detail given to every production. The show has played to over 50 million people spread across fourteen countries. The London production has been playing since 2006 and a national tour is currently in San Francisco.All of this extraordinary success gives the last laugh to a team that had to endure some brickbats from the critics, a stunning loss of the Best Musical Tony Award, and the lofty theorizing of “savvy” theater pundits, one of whom said it wouldn’t last beyond six months. So much for experts.
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