Broadway’s ‘Frozen’ gets put on ice permanently.
In the first ground-shaking Broadway closing of the pandemic, “Frozen” the musical will not return to Times Square after the shutdown ends, Walt Disney Co. officials announced Thursday.
The show, based on an Oscar-winning, billion-dollar Disney movie franchise, opened on Broadway in March 2018 and played for 851 performances — barely a blink of an eye in megahit terms. Such blockbusters as “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” — the other Disney properties waiting out Broadway’s shuttering — have been running robustly for 22 and six years, respectively.
Disney officials say the stoppage does not signify a failing enterprise: The show, directed by Michael Grandage, was bringing in about $1.5 million a week at the St. James Theatre, and grossed more than $150 million over its run. (Estimates put the show’s initial costs at $25 million to $30 million.) Rather, it was a belief that when Broadway comes back, the audiences to sustain multiple Disney productions will not be returning in sufficient numbers. Earlier this week, the Broadway League announced that Broadway’s 41 theaters will remain closed through Sept. 6, adding that “a date to resume performances is yet to be determined.”
“This difficult decision was made for several reasons, but primarily because we believe that three Disney productions will be one too many titles to run successfully in Broadway’s new landscape,” Thomas Schumacher, president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions, said in a letter to his staff. He added that closing the show permits the company to repurpose the sets and costumes for “Frozens” in London, Sydney, Tokyo and Hamburg over the next year.
Schumacher also used the letter to detail other projects in the works — notably, a stage musical version of the 1987 cult movie favorite “The Princess Bride,” with a book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice and a score by David Yazbek, and an expanded stage version of the “Hercules” that debuted last summer in Central Park. Book writer Robert Horn, a Tony winner for “Tootsie,” will be added to the songwriting team of Alan Menken and David Zippel.