page_title: Wicked (musical)
section_title: Commercial reception
hierarchical_section_title: Wicked (musical) / Response / Commercial reception
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre
context_page_description: Wicked is a Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, itself a retelling of the classic 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz.
  The musical is told from the perspective of the witches of the Land of Oz; its plot begins before and continues after Dorothy Gale arrives in Oz from Kansas, and includes several references to the 1939 film and Baum's novel. Wicked tells the story of two unlikely friends, Elphaba and Galinda, who struggle through opposing personalities and viewpoints, rivalry over the same love-interest, reactions to the Wizard's corrupt government, and, ultimately, Elphaba's private fall from grace.
  Produced by Universal Stage Productions in coalition with Marc Platt, Jon B. Platt and David Stone, with direction by Joe Mantello and choreography by Wayne Cilento, the original production of Wicked premiered on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre in October 2003, after completing pre-Broadway tryouts at San Francisco's Curran Theatre in May/June of that same year.
context_section_description: Since its opening in 2003, the original Broadway production of Wicked has broken the house record at the Gershwin Theatre twenty times. It regularly grosses in excess of $1.6 million each week, making it one of the most lucrative productions on Broadway. With a $14 million capitalization, the Broadway production took 15 months to break even, earning back its initial investment by December 21, 2004. In its first year, it grossed more than $56 million. In the week ending January 1, 2006, Wicked broke the record, previously held by the musical The Producers, for the highest weekly box office gross in Broadway history, earning $1,610,934. It has gone on to break its own record numerous times, reaching $1,715,155 in November 2006, $1,839,950, during the 2007 Christmas week, $2,086,135 for the week ending November 29, 2009, $2,125,740 just a few weeks later for the eight performances ending January 3, 2010, and over $2.2 million in the week ending January 2, 2011.  In the first week of 2012, the Broadway production broke a record again, earning $2.7 million. Wicked once again broke this record in the final week of 2012 when it grossed $2.9 million. In the final weekend of 2013, Wicked became the first musical to gross $3 million in one week.
  Wicked's productions across North America and abroad have been equally financially successful.  The Los Angeles production took the local weekly gross record, again from a performance of The Producers, bringing in $1,786,110 in the week ending March 4, 2007. The production joined its Broadway counterpart in setting a new record over Christmas 2007 with $1,949,968, with records also set in Chicago ($1,418,363), and St Louis ($2,291,608), to bring the collective gross of the seven worldwide productions to a world record-breaking $11.2 million. A new suite of records were set over Christmas 2010, with house records broken in San Francisco ($1,485,692), Providence ($1,793,764) and Schenectady ($1,657,139) as well as Broadway, bringing the musical's one-week gross in North America alone to $7,062,335.
  Wicked played to more than 2 million visitors in Chicago with a gross of over $200 million, making it the highest-grossing show in Chicago history by June 2007. With an opening-week gross of $1,400,000, it continually set records and became the longest-running Broadway musical in Chicago history. Producer David Stone told Variety, "we thought it [the Chicago production] would run 18 months, then we'd spend a year in Los Angeles and six months in San Francisco... but sales stayed so strong that the producers created another road show and kept the show running in Chicago." In addition, over 2.2 million saw the touring production in its first two years, which grossed over $155 million The Los Angeles production grossed over $145 million and was seen by more than 1.8 million patrons. Over the 672 performances of the San Francisco production, Wicked sold over 1 million tickets with a cumulative gross of over $75 million. While the Broadway production of Wicked welcomed its 5 millionth audience member on September 29, 2010.
  International productions of Wicked have matched the extremely positive reception at the box-office. Although West End theatres do not publish audited weekly grosses, the West End production of Wicked claimed to take the record for highest one-week gross in December 2006, taking £761,000 in the week ending December 30. On June 23, 2008, the producers reported that over 1.4 million people had seen the London production since its opening, and grosses had topped £50 million; The same reports stated that the show has consistently been one of the two highest-grossing shows in the West End. For the week commencing December 27, 2010, the London production grossed £1,002,885, the highest single-week gross in West End theatre history, with over 20,000 theatregoers attending the nine performances of Wicked that week. The Melbourne production broke Australian box-office records, selling 24,750 tickets in three hours during pre-sales and grossing over $1.3 million on the first business day after
caption: Playing at the Oriental Theatre for more than three years, the Chicago production continually broke box-office records.
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