Last updated 7/30/24
Last season, 12.8 million people attended a Broadway show. To put that figure into perspective, more people went to see plays and musicals in New York than attended baseball and football games for our four major teams. And when you consider the seasons that both the Mets and Yankees had this past year, Broadway seems to be the only entity in town that is consistently hitting home runs.
What makes a popular show? Well, there are a few factors, but basically–since commercial theater is a business–it’s supply/demand economics. A show in a big theater naturally has the potential to make more money than a show in a smaller theater. However, tickets to a popular show in a smaller house can become a hotter commodity due to the scarcity of seats. This list represents a mixture of shows with the highest percentage of seats sold and top-grossers for the end of November.
So, if you’re looking for a barometer that will tell you which shows are buzzworthy fodder for water cooler chatter and tough tickets to get, here’s the list. Updated July 28.
1 - The Lion King
The king of the jungle is also the king of the box office. And who would have ever thought that after 25 years, the stage adaptation of Disney's animated film loosely based on Hamlet would still be filling the theater? Night after night, its eye-popping stagecraft and timeless songs continue to capture the imagination of a new generation of theatergoers.
96.25% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $2,629,846
2 - Wicked
The musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz that asks the question, "are all bad reputations earned," has defied gravity and box office expectations at the cavernous Gershwin Theater, where it has been breaking box office records for over 20 years.
99.57% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $2,266,369
3 - Hamilton
The story of ten dollar bill founding father Alexander Hamilton brought to new life in a thrilling spin on the immigrant experience. Since opening in 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning juggernaut has been packing the house at the Richard Rodgers Theater nightly, where it's been turning hip-hop enthusiasts into American History nerds and vice versa.
101.83% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $2,021,549
4 - Hell's Kitchen
From 16-time Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys comes a coming of age musical about a rebellious girl and her overprotective single mother living in New York's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. Inspired by Keys's own life, the musical is about finding yourself and the community that lifts you.
100.43% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,665,527
5 - Aladdin
What would you do if you had three wishes? A perfect marriage of magic and music makes this stage adaptation of Disney's 1991 animated film the ideal show to introduce new theatergoers into a whole new world of Broadway.
97.95% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,649,819
6 - Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
This sold-out hit in London transforms the August Wilson Theater into a multi-level immersive experience that begins an hour before the show starts. Academy and Tony Award-winner Eddie Redmaye stars at the Emcee in this groundbreaking revival of Kander and Ebb's chilling musical tale of life in pre-Nazi era Germany.
99.12% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,605,295
7 - The Outsiders
The best-selling novel that everyone was assigned to read in high school about a turf war between teen gangs the Greasers and the Socs, is now the Tony Award winner for Best Musical of 2024.
102.48% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,461,306
8 - MJ The Musical
A first-rate creative team took 41 songs from Michael Jackson's discography and spun them into a compelling narrative about the King of Pop as he prepared for his famed 1992 Dangerous tour.
92.87% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,434,330
9 - The Wiz
Emmy Award-winner Wayne Brady and dancefloor diva Deborah Cox lead this highly-anticipated revival of 1975 reimagining of L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
99.88% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,407,251
10 - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
The epic stage version of the continuation of J.K. Rowling's popular Harry Potter series continues to work box office magic as the most popular and highest-grossing non-musical currently running on Broadway.
93.35% seats sold
Gross for week ending 7/28 - $1,380,811
