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What's Going on with the Musical 'Nerds' and its Finances?

There appears to be a potential scandal brewing on Broadway or, at the very least, a lot of questions have been asked since the surprise March 8th postponement slash cancellation of the planned musical about the rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. It turns out that the musical comedy Nerds may have left town in the middle of the night without leaving its creditors a forwarding address.

There are beginning to be a lot of questions concerning what went wrong. As a matter of fact, cast and crew were in afternoon rehearsals when they got the word from the general manager that the musical comedy was being indefinitely postponed because it lost a major investor. Cast and crew were not happy but even madder than them was all the creditors who the top producer Carl Levin left holding the bills.

According to the NYPost , Carl Levin's lawyer wrote a letter to that was supposed to make all of the musical's creditors happier but predictably made no one happy. "Tremendous sums of money were paid for set design, construction, costumes, props, lighting and the full host of costs which go into a Broadway musical theater production," read the letter from attorney Neal M. Rosenbloom. "As production was throttling towards opening, the production costs were running at approximately 410,000 each week. Unfortunately the amounts promised from third-party investors did not fully materialize... My client is deeply saddened by the evolution of events causing the closure of the production... my client wanted me to advise creditors of the unfortunate circumstances that take us to where we are today.

The brewing scandal around producer Carl Levin, who previously according to Variety, was best known for Rock of Ages,  has the power to tarnish the Tony Awards. Levin is both the business manager and the operations manager for the show. Until creditors are paid this is one story that won't go away.

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