MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL leads Broadway with US$2.2 million week
According to The Hollywood Reporter, MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL rose to approximately US$2.2 million and became Broadway’s highest-grossing production for the week ending August 23, 2026. The result came as the Tony-winning musical entered the final week of its run before its scheduled August 30 closing at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, and coincided with Aaron Tveit returning to the role of Christian for a limited engagement.
The report also placed the musical’s average ticket price at approximately US$210, the highest reported across Broadway for the week. All box-office amounts in this report are in US dollars. The production’s weekly gross was more than double its official result for the preceding seven-day period and represented an increase of more than US$1 million.
The Broadway League’s figures for the week ending August 16 show the production grossing US$1,084,659 from an attendance of 9,796, with the Al Hirschfeld operating at 94 per cent capacity. The subsequent reported US$2.2 million figure arrived against a broader weekly decline across Broadway, making the musical’s rise distinct from the direction of the overall market. No producer statement has attributed the increase solely to any one factor.
Tveit, who originated Christian in the Broadway production, began his latest return on August 18 and is scheduled to remain through August 29. The engagement therefore ends one day before the musical’s final Broadway performance. The production’s official schedule assigns Christian Douglas to the role of Christian on August 30, when the company is due to give its last performance at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre.
That schedule is central to understanding the production’s final days. Tveit’s engagement brings the show’s original Christian back during the closing period, but not for the final performance. Douglas is separately assigned to play Christian at the last Broadway show, so the two actors occupy distinct places in the farewell schedule.
Broadway previews for MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL began on June 28, 2019, before the production opened on July 25 that year. Its closure was originally announced for July 26, 2026, but an April 10 announcement added five weeks to the engagement and established August 30 as the revised final date. Earlier projections based on the July closure were superseded by that extension, and final performance and cumulative gross figures will not be available until the run has ended.
The production won ten Tony Awards in 2021, including Best Musical. Tveit received Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for originating Christian, linking his current limited engagement with one of the central performances in the show’s Broadway history. The August 23 box-office result adds a late commercial development to that history without yet providing the production’s final financial or performance totals.
The wider Broadway market moved in the opposite direction during the week. Attendance reportedly fell by approximately three per cent from the previous week, while combined grosses declined by about eight per cent. MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL nevertheless moved ahead of the industry’s other leading earners and was the only production reported at more than US$2 million.
HAMILTON ranked second with approximately US$1.97 million, followed by THE LION KING at US$1.8 million and MJ at US$1.7 million. THE LOST BOYS completed the reported top five with about US$1.1 million. Those rankings placed the closing musical above four other major earners during a week in which the overall Broadway total contracted.
Elsewhere, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY grossed US$729,250 in its first full week of eight performances. The production played to a reported 100 per cent capacity and was scheduled to open on August 25. The total provided Broadway’s first full-week box-office result for the incoming production as MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL approached the other end of its run.
THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW also increased its weekly takings during a principal cast transition. The production grossed US$949,446, approximately US$120,000 above its previous result, as Luke Evans, Stephanie Hsu and Andrew Durand completed their scheduled engagements. Its result captured another point of movement in the weekly market despite the broader decline in attendance and revenue.
MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL retains a direct Australian connection through producer Global Creatures. The Broadway closure is separate from the all-new Australian production previously reported for Sydney Lyric in March 2027 and is not a transfer of the closing Broadway company. In New York, the next confirmed milestones are the conclusion of Tveit’s engagement on August 29 and Douglas’s scheduled return as Christian for the August 30 closing performance.
