After a year and a half of hard work, Matilda, the musical adaptation of the popular children’s novel by Roald Dahl, is officially a profitable hit on Broadway.
The Royal Shakespeare Co. and the Dodgers confirmed that the show has paid back its $16 million investment, placing it in the elite circle of big-budget musicals to turn a profit in London and on Broadway.
After a widely popular opening and seven Olivier Award wins in London, Matilda opened at the Shubert Theatre in April 2013 to rave reviews. The musical landed on the year’s top-10 theater list in many different arts publications. The show was nominated for 12 Tony Awards and won four of them, losing top prize for best musical to Kinky Boots, which also recouped its $13.5 million in October 2013, after seven months.
Matilda was directed by Matthew Warchus, with a Tony Award-winning book by Dennis Kelly and music and lyrics by Australian comedian and composer Tim Minchin. The box office for Matilda on Broadway has slipped a bit since this summer, but attendance remains steadily above 70 percent capacity. The production had a strong Thanksgiving week total of $1,454,493, and has chalked up cumulative grosses of $100.5 million to date.
The musical's North American tour will commence in May 2015, officially opening with a May 29-July 12 engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Plans were also recently announced to launch an Australian production, premiering at Sydney's Lyric Theatre in August 2015.
Minchin has announced that his next musical will be a stage adaptation of the popular 1993 Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day, with Warchus set to direct again. No timeline on that project has been set.
