“Back to the Future,” a nostalgia-rich and spectacle-laden musical adaptation of the much-loved 1985 film, will end its Broadway run on Jan. 5, succumbing to the difficult economics of the commercial theater business.
The show had a decent run — the first performance was on June 30, 2023, and for more than a year it grossed over $1 million most weeks — but it was costly to mount and expensive to sustain; its grosses took a dive in late summer and early fall, and although it had rebounded somewhat more recently, sales were still insufficient to justify continuing. Thus far it has been seen by 720,000 people at the Winter Garden Theater.
The long-gestating show began its production life in England, and won the 2022 Olivier Award for best new musical in London’s West End, where it has been running for more than three years. It has not been so fortunate on Broadway, where it won no Tony Awards. It cost $23.5 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ultimately it did not run long enough, or make enough money each week, to defray its New York costs.
But this is not the end of the line for the show. The Broadway set will move to Germany, where “Back to the Future” plans an open-ended run starting next season. The London run is ongoing, there is a North American tour now underway and productions are planned in Japan and on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.
“Back to the Future” is about a teenager who travels back in time, aided by a mad scientist with a souped-up DeLorean, and must figure out how to deal with the unintended consequences of his trip. One of the highlights of the stage production is the soaring car.
The musical, directed by John Rando, features a book by Bob Gale, who wrote the movie with Robert Zemeckis; the songs are by Alan Silvestri, who wrote the film’s score, and Glen Ballard. The lead producer is Colin Ingram, a British theater producer.
American critics were mostly unimpressed; in The New York Times, the chief theater critic Jesse Green wrote, “Though large, it’s less a full-scale new work than a semi-operable souvenir.”
The show is the seventh musical to announce a closing date since early May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “The Notebook,” “Water for Elephants” and “Suffs.”
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