Disney Closes ‘Frozen’ on Broadway, Citing Pandemic
The show is the first Broadway musical felled by the coronavirus.
Even Queen Elsa’s magic is no match for the coronavirus pandemic.
Disney Theatrical Productions said Thursday that its stage adaptation of “Frozen” will not reopen on Broadway once the pandemic eases, making the musical the first to be felled by the current crisis.
“Frozen” had been the weakest of the three Disney musicals that had been running on Broadway — the others were “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” — and the company made it clear that it does not believe audiences will return in substantial enough numbers to sustain all of those shows.
“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, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, said in a letter to his staff.
Schumacher said the company remains committed to “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” on Broadway, to “The Lion King” and “Mary Poppins” in London’s West End, and to touring productions of “The Lion King” and “Frozen” in North America and “The Lion King” in Britain. The company, which around the world had 29 shows either running or in preproduction earlier this year, has already cut short a North American touring production of “Aladdin” because of the pandemic, closing it six weeks early after a nearly three-year, 41-city run.
“Frozen,” which cost an estimated $25 million to $30 million to produce, arrived on Broadway in 2018 with high hopes because it was adapted from an enormously popular animated film. But the stage adaptation received unenthusiastic reviews from key critics and was shut out at the Tony Awards; its weekly grosses peaked at $2.6 million, but by February were averaging about $1 million.
The decision to close “Frozen” earlier than anticipated is a reminder that the pandemic is likely to alter the theatrical landscape, forcing producers to reassess the financial viability of long-planned projects because of expected challenges attracting audiences and investors.
Already two planned productions have been scrapped: a new Martin McDonagh play called “Hangmen” and a revival of the Edward Albee classic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Both had begun previews, but neither had yet opened, when New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned gatherings of more than 500 people, prompting the shuttering of all Broadway theaters, on March 12.
And this week, after the Broadway League said performances would not resume before Labor Day, the producers of two other Broadway shows planned for this spring and summer — a revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and “MJ,” a new biomusical about Michael Jackson — said they would delay their shows until next spring.
The “Frozen” closing is symbolically important because Disney is not only deep-pocketed but also plays an outsize role in contemporary Broadway. The company’s 1994 agreement to take over Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theater was a pivotal moment in the rebirth of Times Square; “The Lion King” is the top-grossing Broadway show of all time, and Schumacher not only runs Disney Theatrical but also serves as chairman of the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners.
But the Walt Disney Co., with its heavy reliance on theme parks and movie studios, has taken a financial drubbing. The theatrical division, headquartered in New York, has furloughed many employees, as have many other divisions of the company.
Schumacher, intent on demonstrating that Disney plans to stay in the theater business, said in his letter that “we remain committed to developing and producing stage musicals for a long time to come.”
He outlined a number of newish projects for the company, none of them aimed at Broadway. A new production of “Beauty and the Beast,” with the same creative team that worked on the 1994 original, is slated to open overseas next spring and in the United States in 2022, and the company is working on a new, smaller, touring production of “Aladdin.”
He said the company has also begun work on two new musicals adapted from Disney films: “The Jungle Book” will be directed by Christopher Gattelli with a book by Rajiv Joseph and new songs by Richard Sherman. And “Hercules,” directed by Lear deBessonet, will be written by Robert Horn, Alan Menken and David Zippel, expanded from a version that ran last year at New York’s Delacorte Theater under the auspices of the Public Theater.
A new production of the musical “Aida,” directed by Schele Williams, aims to open in Germany in the spring of 2022.
Schumacher also said Disney is developing musical adaptations of “The Princess Bride,” with a book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice and songs by David Yazbek, as well as “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” directed by Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison, with a book by Brian Hill and new songs by Neil Bartram.