Lea Michele Takes ‘Funny Girl’ To $1.6M In First-Week Box Office, Setting Show Record

deadline.com:

Even with a Covid-shortened performance schedule, Lea Michele’s star turn in Funny Girl was serious business last week, with box office for the musical revival more than doubling from the previous week.For the week ending September 11 — Michele’s first week as Fanny Brice — Funny Girl grossed $1,639,212, a dramatic upturn from the previous week’s $659,874 and a significant improvement over even the $1.3 million high averages of original star Beanie Feldstein’s early weeks last spring.‘Funny Girl’: Lea Michele Gets Four Standing Ovations – By Intermission; Jonathan Groff, Ryan Murphy Among The Gleeful CrowdNext week’s grosses report should provide yet another facet to Michele’s box office impact: She’s out of the production this week due to a positive Covid test (last week she played only four performances, including her first night on Tuesday, then the Wednesday matinee and evening shows, and again on Friday; Julie Benko plays the role on Thursdays and filled in for the three weekend shows that Michele missed).

Deadline hears there were a significant number of ticket exchange requests last weekend.Still, even with Michele’s curtailed performance schedule, Funny Girl filled 96% of its seats for the week, compared to the 70-80ish percentages of recent weeks.In fact, Funny Girl was one of few Broadway shows that didn’t take a big, post-Labor Day Holiday hit last week.

Total grosses for the 19 shows on the boards totaled $20,638,554, a 19% drop from the previous tourist-heavy week. The drop in receipts also reflects a slightly slimmer roster: 19 shows compared with the previous week’s 21 – and one of the missing was the mega-bucks earner The Music Man, on a scheduled hiatus while star Hugh Jackman makes the film festival