Money, money, money

By Economist.com

Musicals are booming

“YOU can’t make a living, but you can make a killing,” goes the Broadway adage. Musicals have odds like venture capital: only one in ten makes money, and two out of ten lose it all. The hits, however, are huge. “Cats” probably made a 3,500% return for its initial investors. Since it debuted in London 27 years ago “The Phantom of the Opera”, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, has grossed $5.6 billion worldwide, more than any film or television show. Musicals had their first big boom in the 1940s, when Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma!”. In the 1980s Mr Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, another Brit, invented the “mega musical”, with big-budget shows such as “Phantom” and Mr Mackintosh’s “Les Misérables”. Now the business is belting out high notes again, with new shows, new markets and new interest in old hits. Hollywood studios have always licensed rights to their films; now they are trying to produce them on stage. Disney led the way. Universal Pictures struck accidental gold with “Wicked” (the studio had bought the rights to turn the book, about the Wicked Witch of the West, into a film, but was later approached to make it into a musical, which has grossed $3 billion).