‘Hadestown’ Didn’t Put Up ‘The Odyssey’ Numbers, but the Musical Had a Historic Box Office Weekend
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- "Hadestown: The Musical" live capture opened to $10.2 million domestically from roughly 2,000 screens, narrowly surpassing Disney's theatrical release of "Hamilton" ($10.1 million) to become the highest-opening Broadway live capture on record
- Bleecker Street's Crosswalk banner released the film with LD Entertainment as a planned five-day event, but strong presales prompted Bleecker to request an extension, with the film now positioned to potentially surpass Hamilton's $16.9 million domestic total
- The opening makes "Hadestown" Bleecker Street's biggest opening ever, surpassing Steven Soderbergh's "Logan Lucky" ($7.7 million in 2017) and already landing in the indie distributor's top five releases after one weekend
- Sunday's $2.5 million-plus gross far outperformed Bleecker's internal projections, which called for a 20 percent drop; the film actually fell just 3 percent, which is what nudged it above Hamilton for the opening record
- The release was deliberately scheduled in the uncontested window between "The Odyssey" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day", per Bleecker CEO Kent Sanderson
- Bleecker's next Crosswalk release, "George Michael: The Faith Tour," is being targeted for December — a week ahead of "Dune: Part Three" and "Avengers: Doomsday" with some IMAX screens — continuing the label's event-cinema counterprogramming strategy
Why it matters: Bleecker Street's "scarcity drives urgency" event-cinema model — first validated with K-pop film "Stray Kids: the dominATE Experience" ($7.2 million) — now has its strongest proof point with "Hadestown," a show that won eight Tonys and a Grammy but isn't a cultural landmark on Hamilton's level. The success gives the indie distributor a working playbook to bring additional Broadway captures to theaters between major studio tentpoles, with a December George Michael concert film already locked into a counter-programmed slot.
