“The Lion King” beat the ghost – BBC

Musical “The Lion King” was ahead of its rival, the musical “Phantom of the Opera”, and topped the list of the show with the largest revenue earning for 17 years, more than $ 6 billion.

The Broadway musical “The Lion King” was the most successful show in the entertainment industry. Total revenue statement, which was first shown in 1997, reaching $ 6.2 billion, and it is a little ahead of the previous record holder – a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who managed to earn exactly 6 billion.

Musical” The Lion King “delivered by the same name the Disney animated film, released in 1994.

The songs for the play, which involved dressed in animal costumes the actors and puppets, wrote the musician Elton John and Tim Rice, the poet, and became director Julie Taymor. The musical follows the storyline of the picture and tells the story of a lion cub Simba, his friends and enemies. Official premiered on Broadway at the New Theater in the fall of 1997; responses were just ecstatic, and all accompanied by screenings sold out. Now it is shown in the Minskoff Theatre.

Over the next 17 years of the franchise, “The Lion King” has spread around the world, their version of the musical set at 22 venues – theaters, England, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Spain . The Broadway production also remains popular to this day – in 2013, she became the leader of the theatrical box office in New York, and this year expects to remain until the first.

However, the leader of the global entertainment market, “The Lion King” was not unconditional.

The story of Simba looked at 75 million people worldwide, and this figure is almost twice behind the same “Phantom of the Opera “whose audience of 140 million. Moreover, the” Ghost “- and even the most long-playing shows in the history of Broadway, it is from 1988 (in England it premiered two years earlier). Competition between musicals, apparently, will still continue – for example, “The Phantom of the Opera” and expands its starts from October 4 shows in Russia, as well as published in Hong Kong and Istanbul.

Filmmakers same in this fight giants of show businesses do not even climb. For example, the movie “The Lion King” earned a worldwide box office only $ 987 million, and the highest-grossing film, “Avatar,” James Cameron – “only” $ 2.8 billion. “Avatar”, by the way, ahead of “The Lion King” and by the number of spectators – only in the USA this film looked about 100 million people.

On equal fight at the box office with musicals are only capable of long-term kinofranshizy:

so, a series of eight Harry Potter films earned over 10 years $ 7.7 billion, and half a century of the series of James Bond – about $ 6 billion; however, if we assume for tickets and adjusted for inflation, the Bond get about $ 13 billion.