No, Wicked is Not in Danger of Closing on Broadway

(Photo: Joan Marcus)

by Chris Peterson

I’ve seen some concern on social media lately about Wicked’s Broadway grosses, and I think we need to calm this one down a little.

Yes, the grosses are down. No, Wicked is not suddenly in danger of closing.

Both of those things can be true.

For the week ending September 13, Wicked grossed about $1.2 million at the Gershwin Theatre. That is a pretty dramatic drop from the same week last year, when it grossed just over $2 million. If you look at nothing except those two numbers, I understand why somebody might raise an eyebrow.

But there's some important context being ignored.

That $1.2 million week also came with 96% capacity. Nearly 14,000 people saw Wicked in eight performances. The show isn't playing to a half-empty Gershwin. People are still going. Lots of them.

What's changed considerably is the price people are paying.

The average ticket for that week of September 13 was about $86. Last year, Wicked was routinely commanding much higher prices. And 2025 was frankly ridiculous for a show that had already been running for more than two decades. It grossed more than $126 million for the year, sold more than 805,000 tickets, and played at 100% capacity.

The Wicked movie created another massive wave of attention around a musical that was already one of Broadway's biggest hits. Tickets got more expensive because demand allowed them to. Now we're seeing some normalization.

Through 2026, Wicked is still averaging roughly 94% capacity and more than $1.5 million per playing week. Even during its softer summer stretch, the Gershwin has generally been at or above 90% capacity.

That doesn't mean the decline should be completely ignored. I'm actually very interested in what happens this winter. If we eventually start seeing capacity fall into the 70s, ticket prices continue dropping, and weekly grosses fall substantially from where they are now, then we can have a different conversation.

But we're nowhere near that yet.

There's another pretty obvious clue: Wicked is currently selling group tickets through July 12, 2027, and the production is already taking inquiries for dates beyond that.

Productions can obviously change plans. And because Wicked's weekly operating expenses aren't public, none of us sitting outside the production should pretend we know exactly how much profit it makes every Tuesday through Sunday.

But come on.

A 23-year-old Broadway musical filling around 90 to 96% of one of Broadway's largest theatres while regularly grossing more than a million dollars a week is not what a show circling the drain looks like.

What we're seeing is Wicked coming down from an extraordinary, movie-fueled box office high.

That's a story. "Wicked is about to close" isn't one.