A grand tip of the hat to Robin Leach for yesterday's big scoop -- which I just caught up on after a marathon of writing -- about Cirque du Soleil's plans for its big Michael Jackson extravaganzas. Leach caught Cirque CEO Daniel Lamarre at the 8000th performance of Mystere earlier this week and learned:* There will be two Cirque-MJ shows, the first being an arena production debuting in the Mandalay Bay Events Center that will run twice a night for at least two months starting Dec. 15, 2011. It will then tour North America. Tickets go of on sale for that on Nov. 3 of this year.
* A second sit-down Cirque-MJ thing will be created for a Vegas showroom and open in early 2013.
* The budget for creation and staging of these shows is a combined $250 million.
There's more, including some detail about the technology, in Robin's account and Q-and-A with Lamarre. I do have one minor quibble with Robin, which is that $250 million to create and stage two shows does not seem like that much to me. Ka cost $140 million and "O" cost $100 million, and that was long ago. But then again, look at this economy, huh? Sounds like a Vegas stimulus package to me.
2 comments:
Fleshed out a little I guess.
The plan was always a touring show followed by a permanent show though, that's not new news.
Mandalay Events Center was known in April.
It sounds like maybe MGM is requesting some proof of concept for new Cirque shows and maybe they aren't sold on it as a resident show in Vegas. 2013 (and no reference to early or late 2013) seems like an awfully long ramp up time, considering the arena show is touring next year.
Any idea what Viva Elvis and Love cost for development? I'd have to believe these would be more relevant cost associations given the structure in comparison. (i.e less reliance on technology stages)
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