You heard it here first: "The Producers" will close Feb. 9. An announcement goes out later tonight.This is not a surprise, seeing how Mel Brooks basically said as much in June on "The Strip" and in my interview for Newsweek. But the other bit of news is that Tony Danza, who has been playing Max Bialystock since late summer, will remain in the gig for the rest of the show's run.
It's unclear whether we can call this a failure if Brooks himself didn't expect it to be more than a one-year run. From what I understand, the show essentially broke even and brought healthy foot traffic into Paris Las Vegas.
With this show gone, we've still got "Spamalot," "Phantom," "Mamma Mia!," "Menopause" and the upcoming "Jersey Boys." But I suspect that the Broadway "experiment" is petering out, and I'm predicting "Spamalot" won't stick around through the end of 2008. (Wynn did say on "The Strip" in September that the royalties to Eric Idle and Mike Nichols eat deep into his profits.) It's hard to imagine what show anyone would go for now given the difficult recent history although the Billy Joel-scored "Movin' Out" certainly has potential for all of the "Mamma Mia!" and "Jersey Boys" reasons.
1 comments:
Good scoope. Thats too bad. I was hopping to see this in April.
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