{"id":2158963,"date":"2025-11-15T18:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T18:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2158963"},"modified":"2025-11-15T18:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T18:01:13","slug":"can-stranger-things-season-5-reverse-the-broadway-shows-godawful-ticket-sales-holding-onto-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/can-stranger-things-season-5-reverse-the-broadway-shows-godawful-ticket-sales-holding-onto-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Can ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 reverse the Broadway show’s godawful ticket sales?: ‘Holding onto hope’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cStranger Things: The First Shadow\u201d has been runnin\u2019 up that road, runnin\u2019 up that hill for months on Broadway.<\/p>\n

Surprised observers feel like they\u2019re in the Upside Down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t the play based on the Netflix series<\/a> and produced by the streaming giant and Sonia Friedman Productions supposed to be a massive hit?<\/p>\n

Not so much.<\/p>\n

Broadway\u2019s \u201cStranger Things: The First Shadow\u201d has struggled to sell tickets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week, \u201cFirst Shadow,\u201d which only landed on Broadway in late March, played to just 75% capacity. The seven days before that? 65%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For a production of this scale, a musical-size undertaking that was reportedly supposed to be the first part of a planned trilogy<\/a>, there might as well be Eleven people in the audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s among the lowest-attended shows on Broadway.<\/p>\n

And across the pond, too.<\/p>\n

In London\u2019s West End<\/a> where the prequel show started, the fun musical \u201cBuena Vista Social Club\u201d is said to be snapping up its theater, the Phoenix, if \u201cFirst Shadow\u201d sales don\u2019t perk up soon.<\/p>\n

Louis McCartney and Gabrielle Nevaeh star in \u201cStranger Things: The First Shadow\u201d on Broadway. Evan Zimmerman<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What Netflix spent on their flashy boondoggle is unknown. One source called the endeavor \u201ca rounding error\u201d for the company that casually dropped $320 million on the movie \u201cThe Electric State,\u201d one of the most expensive \u2014 and worst! \u2014 films ever.<\/p>\n

But most Broadway insiders with budgeting experience agree \u201cFirst Shadow\u201d costs at least $1 million per week to run. And it has only cleared that bar once in the past three months.<\/p>\n

The Post has reached out to the production to ask what, exactly, the goal of keeping this show open is.<\/p>\n

The pipe dream, a source said, is that the final batch of TV episodes, which begin dropping on Netflix Nov. 26, will right the ship \u2014 and this pricey play actually includes an enormous ship.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s holding onto hope that the new season drives ticket sales,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Miillie Bobby Brown returns for the fifth and final season of \u201cStranger Things\u201d on Netflix. Ursula Coyote\/Netflix<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s no sure thing, however. While \u201cStranger Things\u201d is a behemoth on the small screen, that has not proven true far away from the comfort of the remote control.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like Netflix is finding that high viewership doesn\u2019t always equal demand for lateral content, merchandise and experiences,\u201d a source familiar with Netflix\u2019s \u201cStranger\u201d efforts said.<\/p>\n

They called another multi-million-dollar live event, \u201cStranger Things: The Experience,\u201d \u201ca flop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That three-year-old immersive show has played in 10 cities and has struggled to find an audience. Netflix also had to redo the final scene mid-run after the TV series introduced villainous Vecna.<\/p>\n

The source chalked up the streamer\u2019s woes to bad planning and anticipation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk your niece and nephew what they want for Christmas,\u201d they said. \u201cThe shelves are stocked with \u2018Stranger Things\u2019 collabs and nothing from Netflix\u2019s big 2025 hit \u2018KPop Demon Hunters\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Animated musical \u201cDemon Hunters\u201d is Netflix\u2019s most-watched movie of all time.<\/p>\n

The TV show has had difficulty spanning successful non-small-screen offshoots. WireImage<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whether Little Billy and Sally will also want tickets to Broadway\u2019s \u201cThings\u201d under the tree once Season 5 begins is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

In the realm of Broadway fantasy, the kids of \u201cStranger Things\u201d are eyeing the kids of \u201cHarry Potter\u201d with green envy.<\/p>\n

Because, well, Hogwarts actually has some green.<\/p>\n

That wondrous hit,<\/a> also produced by Friedman alongside Colin Callender, has been playing at the Lyric Theater for seven years now and won the Tony Award for Best Play back in 2018. \u201cCursed Child\u201d got great reviews; dismal \u201cFirst Shadow\u201d caused critics to curse.<\/p>\n

And \u201cPotter\u201d just got a big shot of pumpkin juice.<\/p>\n

Tom Felton, the 38-year-old Brit who played Draco Malfoy in the eight popular films, has joined the cast in the same role he played onscreen in that $7.7 billion Hollywood franchise. And sales have shot up like a Nimbus 2000 broomstick.<\/p>\n

The advance, a source said, is more than $30 million.<\/p>\n

Vecna must be vexed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cStranger Things: The First Shadow\u201d has been runnin\u2019 up that road, runnin\u2019 up that hill for months on Broadway. Surprised observers feel like they\u2019re in the Upside Down.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t the play based on the Netflix series and produced by the streaming giant and Sonia Friedman Productions supposed to be a massive hit? Not so much. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2158964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[344468,21741,21912,23191,24047],"class_list":["post-2158963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-broadway","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-theater"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Can-Stranger-Things-Season-5-reverse-the-Broadway-shows-godawful.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158965,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158963\/revisions\/2158965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2158964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}