‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ to Slim Down Before Broadway Return

Structured essentially as a stage sequel to J.K. Rowling’s seven wildly popular “Harry Potter” novels, the play was the most expensive ever to land on Broadway, costing $35.5 million to mount, and another estimated $33 million to redo Broadway’s Lyric Theater. Before the pandemic, the play was routinely grossing around $1 million a week on Broadway — an enviable number for most plays, but not enough for this one, with its large company and the expensive technical elements that undergird its stage magic.

The play’s lead producers, Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, said in a joint statement that, “Given the challenges of remounting and running a two-part show in the US on the scale of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ and the commercial challenges faced by the theater and tourism industries emerging from the global shutdowns, we are excited to be able to move forward with a new version of the play that allows audiences to enjoy the complete Cursed Child adventure in one sitting eight times a week.”

The play was written by Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany, based on a story credited to Rowling, Thorne and Tiffany. Thorne and Tiffany said they had been working on a new version of the show during the pandemic, which, they said, “has given us a unique opportunity to look at the play with fresh eyes.”

“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” began its stage life in London, opening in the summer of 2016, and winning nine Olivier awards — the most of any play — in 2017. It arrived on Broadway in 2018, picked up six Tony Awards, and was selling very strongly, around $2 million a week, for nearly a year. But the sales softened over time, as average ticket prices fell, apparently because of a combination of the lengthy time commitment and the need to purchase two tickets to see both parts of the story.

The show began to expand globally — adding productions in San Francisco and Australia, and planning its first production in a language other than English for Hamburg — making restructuring complicated. But the producers have apparently decided to go to a one-part structure in the United States, while maintaining the two part structure elsewhere in the world, as they try to find the formula for long-term global success.