{"id":1264,"date":"2013-10-20T04:36:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T04:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2013-10-20T04:36:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T04:36:00","slug":"lion-king-to-become-the-first-show-to-gross-more-than-1-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/lion-king-to-become-the-first-show-to-gross-more-than-1-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Lion King to become the first show to gross more than $1 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/node\/115086\/player\/storyplayer\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"240px\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/\">The Lion King<\/a>, the musical, is about to break a Broadway record &#8212; it\u2019s expected to become the first show to gross more than $1 billion this week.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the Disney movie, &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; opened on Broadway 16 years ago. But it\u2019s not crossing the billion dollar threshold just because it\u2019s been around it\u2019s been so long. There are about four other musicals that have run longer.<\/p>\n<p>David Rooney is a theater critic for The Hollywood Reporter. And I asked him, so how did &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; do it?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe how is simple, it\u2019s a good show,\u201d says Rooney. \u201cAnd it was an instant phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rooney says unlike previous Disney efforts, the entertainment company didn\u2019t just recreate the movie on the stage. Instead, they hired avant-garde director Julie Taymor, who used puppetry and other stage devices to capture the magic of theater.<\/p>\n<p>And, he says, Disney has kept the marketing dollars flowing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of shows that are doing that kind of business, think well we don\u2019t need to spend major marketing money,\u201d Rooney says.<\/p>\n<p>The musical also has a built-in audience, says Blake Ross is the editor-in-chief of Playbill.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201c&#8217;Lion King&#8217; is a pretty good universal show for kids to go to,\u201d Ross said.<\/p>\n<p>And, she says, like a lot of recent animated movies by Disney, adults enjoy the the musical too.<\/p>\n<p>News {Via <a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outgoing\/www.marketplace.org\/topics\/business\/hakuna-matata-means-1-billion');\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/topics\/business\/hakuna-matata-means-1-billion\" target=\"_blank\">Marketplace.org<\/a>}<\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 a2a_target addtoany_list\" id=\"wpa2a_1\"><a class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share_save\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-any\/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"\/><\/a>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\nwpa2a.script_load();\n\/\/--><\/script>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lion King, the musical, is about to break a Broadway record &#8212; it\u2019s expected to become the first show to gross more than $1 billion this week. Based on the Disney movie, &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; opened on Broadway 16 years ago. But it\u2019s not crossing the billion dollar threshold just because it\u2019s been around [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 a2a_target addtoany_list\" id=\"wpa2a_2\"><a class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share_save\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-any\/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"\/><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,82,536],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1265,"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lionkingbroadwayticketsonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}