“Mamma Mia!” was another story, having been a big hit in London. Here was a feel-good show that recycled a bunch of songs by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, and asked nothing more of us than to be entertained and forget all our troubles, which continued to feel downright apocalyptic. The Broadway community needed a hit and even the critic at the New York Times had to comply by repeating his female date’s positive take on the show. What Ben Brantley really thought of “Mamma Mia!,” no one ever knew from that carefully crafted money review.

The “Mamma Mia!” that opened Thursday at the Winter Garden is a touring production, and at intermission I was not thinking of the recently destroyed World Trade Center. I went much further back, to the 1970s when vanity productions like “Angel,” “Doctor Jazz,” “Got tu Go Disco” and “Platinum” took up their brief residences on the Rialto among now-classic shows by Sondheim, Kander & Ebb and Lloyd Webber. The current “Mamma Mia!” remains under the control of its original director, Phyllida Lloyd; production designer, Mark Thompson; and other creatives. Frankly, the show looks so tacky that it could be the original 2001 production with a not-very-good paint job.

The songs by Andersson and Ulvaeus have never had much to do with Catherine Johnson’s book about a bride-to-be who invites three men to her wedding, thinking that one of them may be her father. Generally, the first line of songs like “S.O.S.” and “The Winner Takes It All” have something to do with that story, and then the lyrics go off in another direction. That disconnection bothered me back in 2001. Now, I was just relieved that the actors were singing and not reciting lines from Johnson’s book, which failed to elicit more than a few isolated giggles at the preview performance I attended. Most of the big laughs come from some slapstick business, like the chorus boys wearing swim flippers.

I missed the eye candy of Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard, the three possible inseminators from the 2008 movie. On stage, in the Brosnan role of Sam, Victor Wallace emotes enough for a dozen actors. It’s contagious. After intermission, Amy Weaver’s bride and Christine Sherrill’s mother-of-the-bride also caught his overacting bug.

As the mother’s sidekick friends, Jalynn Steele and Carly Sakolove manage to rise above the dispiriting mess around them.

“Mamma Mia!” opens Thursday and runs through Feb 1, 2026.

The post ‘Mamma Mia!’ Broadway Review: The Bride Has Seen Better Days appeared first on TheWrap.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, alleges Weinstein and his companies owned a 50% stake in the tour and were entitled to half of the gross proceeds from NETworks Presentations, National Artists Management Company and FNL Touring.

Despite lacking signed final agreements before the tour launched in October 2016 — after the Broadway run ended in August that year — his partners began payments, but abruptly stopped them, the lawsuit states. It also accuses the producers of failing to provide proper accounting, and demands a full audit of the tour’s books.

The complaint also claims the producers stopped making contractual payments, including a $4,000 minimum weekly advance, a $3,750 consulting fee, and a $2,000 guaranteed weekly minimum. Plaintiffs were also promised 27.5 percent of net profits, according to agreements cited in the suit.

Weinstein’s lawsuit seeks $2.3 million plus legal and consulting fees. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Weinstein is in New York prison awaiting sentencing on his June conviction for sexual assault. He also faces a 16-year sentence in California on rape and sexual assault convictions.

The post Harvey Weinstein Sues ‘Finding Neverland’ National Tour Producers, Alleges $2.3 Million in Withheld Payments appeared first on TheWrap.

“Jesus Christ Superstar” set the West Coast’s iconic bandshell ablaze this weekend with “Wicked” Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo taking on the O.G. messiah role – this one being a little less green than her Elphaba.

Erivo’s take on Jesus Christ proved to be as Herculean a theatrical accomplishment as anything we’ve seen from her to date. Graceful and heroic, sharp and emotive, the “Color Purple” Tony winner as the son of God was a rousing musical experience. Between the assured guidance of “What’s the Buzz,” the doting affection of “Everything’s Alright” and the wailing admonition of “The Temple,” Act I alone showcased Erivo’s prowess as a dramatic actress and world-class vocalist.

But her Act II rendition of the six-minute “Gethsename (I Only Want to Say),” in which Jesus pleads with God to let him live, was the runaway highlight of the evening. Opening night saw her final words of “Take me, now! Before I change my mind” met with an extended standing ovation from the thousands in attendance. For all the religious right-wing dust it kicked up when the L.A. Philharmonic announced a queer, Black woman would be playing Jesus, it turned out to be an inspired casting and a role that put to use Erivo’s singular abilities as a performer while even allowing her to flex new gradations and ridges we didn’t know she had. 

Erivo alone made a fine argument for the price of admission – even as the nearly 18,000-capacity amphitheater’s resale tickets went day-of for three and four figures apiece. But Adam Lambert as Judas Iscariot was an added aural feast that made this “Superstar” all the richer. Fans were teased in the lead-up to Friday of what to anticipate from the “American Idol” alum (he and Webber released a studio recording of the show-opening “Heaven on Their Minds”). But Lambert is even better out of the studio and let loose on a live mic. Riffing and shrieking his way through Judas’ metal-tinged upper register with other classics like “Damned for All Time” and “Superstar,” Lambert had the panache and presence to meet Erivo mark-for-mark. 

Fleshing out the rest of the cast was true Broadway royalty in “Hamilton” star Philippa Soo as Mary Magdalene and Raúl Esparza as Pontius Pilate. Elsewhere, Disney star Milo Manheim (seen on L.A. stages last fall leading Deaf West Theatre’s “American Idiot”) played Peter, and Josh Gad played the gaudy King Herod (after handing the opening night reins to John Stamos while isolating after a COVID diagnosis). And while lesser-known than some of their Hollywood-kissed co-stars, the dynamism of Brian Justin Crum (previously of “America’s Got Talent”) and Zachary James (Grammy-winning opera singer and vet of Broadway and the West End) as Annas and Caiaphas kept some of the production’s best-known ensemble numbers in assured hands as the powers of the Roman empire set in motion Judas’ betrayal and Jesus’ crucifixion. 

As far as the actual production itself, the Hollywood Bowl’s staging was not the first time we’ve seen “Jesus Christ Superstar” given a deconstructed industrial concert treatment. Given its rock opera formula, it continued to work here without breaking the mold of what one expects from the show. Smoke, lights, LED screens and urban-punk costuming from Emilio Sosa paired with more minimalist set pieces that platformed the music and vocalists above all else.

The band, led by Grammy-winning musical director and conductor Stephen Oremus, performed live onstage while Tony-winning director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo made the most of the expansive Bowl space; performers entered some numbers walking down the aisles of the garden and often looped around the pit across the extended stage’s lip. It’s ultimately across that walkway, too, that Erivo’s Jesus made his final walk to crucifixion while Lambert sang his farewell number “Superstar.” 

The show was produced in association with Neil Meron and Robert Greenblatt with scenic design by Jason Ardizzone-West, projections by Peter Negrini, lighting design by Tyler Lambert-Perkins and Tyler Glover, sound sign by Jonathan Burke and hair and makeup sign by Brandi Strona. 

While Erivo, Lambert and co. took their final bow Sunday night – and any additional future for this specific production remains unclear – the benefit of performing at the Hollywood Bowl concert-style vs. a Broadway theater is there have been plenty of fan videos from the audience flooding social media and YouTube over the weekend, giving musical fans far and wide the opportunity to get a taste of this invigorating retelling of Jesus’ final days. And for those who were lucky enough to see it all in the flesh — God-willing — we’ll get to rewatch our favorite bits again and again.

The post ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ LA Theater Review: Cynthia Erivo and Adam Lambert Reach Biblical Heights appeared first on TheWrap.

Joe Mantello will direct the play after helming its premiere run at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago last year. That iteration also starred Metcalf, Stock, Drea and Gerachis. The show’s Broadway version will start its limited, 18-week run at the Booth Theatre with performances beginning Oct. 7 and its official opening night set for Oct. 30.

Best known for writing the original play and screenplay for Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale,” Hunter is set to make his Broadway debut with the new Rudin-produced run of “Little Bear Ridge Road.” The play follows an estranged aunt and her nephew as they reunite in rural Idaho following the death of a patriarchal figure in their family.

Rudin is set to produce the Broadway show alongside IAC businessman Barry Diller. “Little Bear Ridge Road” marks a reunion between the two, who previously co-produced over 10 Broadway shows together, including renditions of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “West Side Story,” “Carousel” and more. Diller’s IAC has also, notably, helped finance Rudin-produced films like “Uncut Gems,” “Lady Bird,” “Ex Machina,” “Eighth Grade,” “Inherent Vice” and “First Cow.”

Even more importantly, the play marks a return to Broadway for Rudin, who stepped away from the theatrical space after reports were published in 2021 about his abusive behavior behind the scenes.

Rudin, who won an Oscar in 2008 for producing the Best Picture-winning “No Country for Old Men,” announced his intention to return to Broadway in a March interview with The New York Times. He told the publication that he planned on staging four plays in the coming Broadway season, including a fall run of “Little Bear Ridge Road,” a fall run of playwright Bruce Norris’ “Cottonfield” and an Off Broadway production next winter of a new Wallace Shawn play directed by André Gregory titled “What We Did Before Our Moth Days.”

In the same interview, Rudin reflected on his behavior and his public downfall. “I was just too rough on people,” he admitted. “I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago. I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy.” When asked whether or not he planned to start producing movies again as well, Rudin said, “I want to do this first. I want to see what it feels like. I want, frankly, to make sure I’m still good at it, and I want to make sure that I’m not going to be killed by a sniper’s bullet on 45th Street.”

“I think one of the good things that happened with me being out for a few years is that it created room for other people, which I think is a great thing and a really healthy thing,” the producer added. “At the same time, there’s a corner of it that I enjoyed occupying, which is making good work with good friends and people that I trusted and wanted to be in a room with. So I’m going to do that.”

The post Producer Scott Rudin Sets Broadway Return With Laurie Metcalf and Barry Diller After 4-Year Exile appeared first on TheWrap.

That’s because “Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical” is now streaming on Disney+.

Samantha Barks and Laura Dawkes star as Elsa and Anna, respectively, in the taped West End production of the musical. Craig Gallivan, Jammy Kasongo, Oliver Ormson and Richard Frame also star.

The musical is, of course, based on Disney’s hit 2013 animated film, “Frozen.” Oscar winners Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez returned to write the music and lyrics for the theatrical adaptation, which ran from 2018 to 2020 on Broadway. The West End version then ran from 2021 to 2024.

Friday’s debut echoes Disney’s previous move of streaming a live stage recording of “Hamilton” in 2020. That movie went on to win an Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded).

Elsewhere, “Frozen 3” is currently in production and is scheduled to premiere on Nov. 24, 2027.

“Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical” is now streaming on Disney+ in the U.S.

The post ‘Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical’ Is Now Streaming, Here’s How to Watch It at Home appeared first on TheWrap.

Swinging by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ “Las Culturistas” podcast on Wednesday, the former first lady shared that she has indeed seen Escola’s alternate history comedy that envisions Abraham Lincoln’s wife, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, as a drunk, wannabe cabaret star. Obama shared went in blind but came out loving it.

“We imagine that everyone’s turning to you to see how you’re responding to this specific play,” Yang mused of Obama’s theater-going habits.

“A lot of times, I sneak in afterwards, so I don’t think that people knew I was there because I come in at dark, I slip in at the side and just sit,” she explained. “And I didn’t know fully what ‘Oh, Mary!’ was, right? So I went with a friend, and it was a recommendation. They said it was a play. And I didn’t do the research, which I usually do. So I wasn’t sure what was going on.”

But then the curtain opened up, the spotlight went on, and a curly-haired, hoop dress-clad Escola entered the stage in drunken hysteria.

“Scene 1, I am cracking up,” Obama recalled, but admitted that she was aware of how she was responding in the darkened audience. “[I was] feeling like, ‘Oh my god, if people see me laughing, it’s going to be on Page Six!’ But I loved it — so happy for the Tony win. I mean, you know, just out of your mind — this is when you think, ‘Who thought of this? What’s going inside that head that thought of retelling history in this very interesting but powerful way?’ Just, I loved it. Loved it.”

Rogers, a peer and friend of Escola, then shared that “Oh, Mary!” may read as a political farce, but it’s also very personal to its creator.

“And also when you get to know Cole, and you really realize that so much of their actual personal experience is in that show even if you don’t know — like, the things that they’ve struggled with and what they’ve wanted and the kind of resistance they’ve been met with is all in there.”

“In the bones of Mary Todd Lincoln,” Obama quipped, later adding: “I had a great time.”

The hot-ticketed Broadway production is fresh off a number of Tony Award wins, including a history-making win for Cole Escola, who became the first nonbinary performer to win Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play. The production announced Wednesday that “RuPaul’s Drag Race” icon-turned-Broadway regular Jinkx Monsoon will take over the role of Mary Todd Lincoln in August.

“Las Culturistas” is an iHeartPodcast and Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network.

The post Michelle Obama Knows People Want Her Opinion on FLOTUS Farce ‘Oh, Mary!’: ‘I Wasn’t Sure What Was Going On’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Jordan Tannahill’s “Prince Faggot” opened Tuesday at Playwrights Horizons in a co-production with Soho Rep, and as the play makes clear in its first few minutes, all children have romantic desires even if they don’t know what sex is all about. It’s assumed that children are heterosexual, which is untrue, or that children are asexual, which is absurd.

“Prince Faggot” is half fantasy, about what would happen a decade from now if the adult Prince George were gay; and it’s part reality, about the childhoods of the gay and trans actors who perform in this world premiere production, which is replete with those same actors striking very elegant poses in photographs taken years ago. In other words, “Prince Faggot” is meta-theater at its best and most thought-provoking.

It doesn’t mean anything to call “Prince Faggot” the best play of the 2025-26 theater season, which is only about six weeks old. It does mean something to put Tannahill’s play in the same august company as Bess Wohl’s “Liberation,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose” and Emil Weinstein’s “Becoming Eve,” all of which opened earlier this year. As with these American writers, Tannahill, a Canadian, is a great storyteller, and he runs fast and furiously with this riveting narrative: What happens if a contemporary prince comes out as gay and marries another man when he’s finally king?

Tannahill attempts to distance his George from the real George. An actor in “Prince Faggot” tells us, “Yes there’s a real child named George, but obviously this is not his story, only he can write that for himself. This is our story.” OK.

Also, in the Playbill credits, Tannahill lists the actors, and instead of giving us the characters they play, he identifies them with a numeral, one through six. Fortunately, on stage, he is far less timid. John McCrea delivers a most troubled and sympathetic Prince George, with K. Todd Freeman and Rachel Crowl playing his very supportive parents, William and Kate. As Tannahill sees this couple, the future king and queen are supportive to the point of incredulity. The pay-off is that their benign behavior in the face of a PR storm provides the launchpad for the double-cast David Greenspan to steal the show.

When George comes out to his parents, and in the process tells them about his new non-white boyfriend (the very charismatic Mihir Kumar, a real heartthrob), their major concern is that the prince came out to one of the palace’s gay butlers (Greenspan) five years earlier. When William and Kate finally meet the boyfriend on a weekend at Anmer Hall, they leave it to the royal family’s female publicist (again, Greenspan, being a comic delight) to probe into the young commoner’s past to warn him of the impending tabloid chopping block. There’s no time to lose: A photo of the two young men holding hands on the train from London has already appeared in the tabloids.

“Prince Faggot” shares a number of themes, especially the nature of privacy and celebrity, with the currently streaming Netflix documentary “Harry & Meghan.” Fortunately, Tannahill doesn’t turn his subjects into pathetic victims as they lounge around in luxury at their Montecito estate.

As written by Tannahill and performed by McCrea, Prince George quickly emerges as a real piece of work, a complex character who captivates without becoming a casualty of the press and the royal family a la Harry and Meghan — not to mention Princess Diana in many books, TV shows and movies.

This fictional George enjoys a sex life so unusual that all cellphones at the Playwrights Horizons theater get the pre-curtain bag treatment. The simulated sex is graphic and often features bondage. Tannahill’s ruminations on the royalty’s fondness for ritual and decorum makes this prince a perfect fit for the world of S&M play.

N’yomi Allure Stewart rounds out the cast playing Princess Charlotte. Kate and Williams’ youngest child, Prince Louis, may be relieved to know that Tannahill has left him out of this family portrait. Perhaps the playwright also should have eliminated his sister as well. Playing Charlotte, Stewart doesn’t have much to do, but she deliver a speech, based on her rehearsal interview, on what it means to be a princess at one of New York City’s drag balls. These spoken biographies, fictional or not, could interrupt the flow of the narrative; instead, under Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s astute direction, each solo moment enhances, and sometimes even dominates, the royal drama. Chowdhroy also manages to create glamor and grandeur, as well as real pathos, on a very small stage. His design team is top-notch: David Zinn (sets), Montana Levi Blanco (costumes), Isabella Byrd (lighting) and Lee Kinney (sound and original music).

The post ‘Prince Faggot’ Off Broadway Review: One of the Year’s Best New Plays Is a Wild Royal Family Portrait appeared first on TheWrap.

In such theatrical situations, it helps when the actor playing the dark protagonist exudes not only charm but is innately likable. Jim Parsons, with his Nice Guy persona, made the viper-tongued Michael in “The Boys in the Band” extremely watchable. In Penelope Skinner’s “Angry Alan,” John Krasinski provides a similar charisma that puts the Roger character on the side of the audience until, one vexed comment after another, we turn on the guy.

Krasinski’s task here is far more challenging than Parsons’ in “Boys,” if for no other reason than Roger is the only character we meet in the flesh in what is almost, but not quite, a one-person 85-minute show. “Angry Alan” opened Wednesday at the new Studio Seaview after its 2018 world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival.

Roger thinks of himself as a victim of reverse discrimination. He’s divorced, and even though he lost his high-paying dream job at AT&T, the courts require Roger to pay top-dollar child support for a teenage son he rarely sees. And as male misfortune would have it, no sooner did Roger move in with his new girlfriend than she take up with a leftist-thinking group of artists who see nothing wrong with admiring Picasso’s art, despite Picasso having been a sexist; watching Woody Allen movies, despite the whole Mia/Soon-Yi/Dylan Farrow mess; and, perhaps worst of all, turning the “50 Shades of Grey” franchise into a huge success, despite all those books and movies being downright terrible.

Under Sam Gold’s sharp direction, “Angry Alan” is one of those plays that evokes very different reactions depending on your gender. Most of the laughter at the preview I attended had a distinctly feminine timber to it, and it wasn’t just the ha-ha variety. It was the kind of laughter that puts up a wall of resistance, saying, “Roger, stop being an a-hole!”

Although written and staged four years before Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” now on Broadway, “Angry Alan” fits into the current vogue for plays about bad-acting white straight men. The difference is, “Angry Alan” shows why men like Roger act the way they do. “John Proctor” merely incites us to lynch the creep.

Roger is angry, but as cunningly played by Krasinski, he is also kinda sweet, which is why, I think, the laughter from the men in the audience may be far less pointed in its attack. Krasinski expertly dons lamb’s clothing to play a man who’s basically a pig. Krasinski is also very effective at playing all the people in Roger’s life. He makes us want to go to the “Angry Alan” website, to which Roger has become addicted and to which he even donates one month of child support.

The more Roger visits “Angry Alan” the more limited his world view becomes. The set design by Dot aptly visualizes his state of mind. At first glance, Roger’s living room appears very detailed if rather generically appointed. Only later does the set reveal itself as a bunch of painted flats.

Skinner too often marks her criticism of Roger’s behavior by giving him little asides that directly contradict what he has just told us. Krasinski handles these comments beautifully, tossing them off as afterthoughts that the audience doesn’t catch until a moment or two later.

Roger becomes so enamored of Angry Alan that he travels to hear him speak in person. Skinner makes one big mistake here. Roger is surprised to see a few women at Angry Alan’s male-consciousness-raising confab, only to learn that one of those females is a journalist, who, in turn, tells him off when he attempts to be sociable or pick her up. (We’re never quite sure which.) Sorry: No decent journalist writing a story about such a confab would ever reveal his or her true opinion to an attendee. The reporter is there to ask questions, and becoming an active participant by verbally trashing a guy like Roger is to stop soaking up the color necessary to write a good story.

Now that I got that off my reporter chest, Skinner missed a dramatic opportunity here. The female journalist should have led Roger on, letting him think she was writing a positive piece. When he then reads the finished article in the safety of his vacuum of a living room, only then does Roger realize how he has been used, giving him even more reason for his feelings of victimization.

“Angry Alan” nicely recovers from this big misfire with a surprise ending that should remain a surprise. In the Playbill program, five actors’ names are listed as “cameos.” I’ve never before seen that credit used in the theater, and four of the names are actors who only appear on stage as large photo projections. The fifth is Ryan Colone, who, in about only 10 minutes of stage time, gives “Angry Alan” a most explosive ending.

The post ‘Angry Alan’ Off Broadway Review: John Krasinski Expertly Dons Lamb’s Clothing to Play a Pig appeared first on TheWrap.

Led by “Hamilton” creator and original star Lin-Manuel Miranda, the performance was a medley of songs from the hit Broadway show, including “My Shot,” “Non-Stop,” “You’ll Be Back” and “Guns and Ships.” It is not the performance’s selection of songs that viewers have keyed into online, though.

Miranda & Co., notably, wore all-black outfits for the performance, and TikTok user @irving.torres argued that they did so intentionally because they wanted to signify that they are “mourning the loss of the ideal democracy from 2015” when “Hamilton” first premiered and President Obama was still in office.

@irving.torres What a powerful statement #hamilton #hamiltonmusical @Hamilton ♬ original sound – Irving Torres

The only “Hamilton” cast member who wore a color onstage that was not black was Jonathan Groff, who briefly reprised his role as King George III wearing a red blazer. Fans online have theorized that the color red was chosen for Groff’s outfit as not only a nod to his “Hamilton” character, but also President Trump and his king-like delusions of grandeur.

“The OG ‘Hamilton’ cast wearing all black & Jonathan Graff coming out with a red jacket & only singing the da-da-dats is giving VERY intentional,” one user wrote on Threads. “I don’t wanna hear your takes that it’s ‘just theater black’ or that it was ‘last minute’ cause it’s not.”

Others have argued that the performance’s stage design may have been a nod to The White House. Many more, meanwhile, agree that the cast’s decision to include the line “history has its eyes on you” near the end of their Tony medley was likely both a message to President Trump and a reference to America’s current, turbulent political landscape.

Whether you believe all of these theories or not, it is worth noting that “Hamilton” is not only a musical filled with political ideas and themes, but that its cast members have also never shied away from sending political messages.

In 2016, then-members of the musical’s cast delivered a message directly to then Vice President-elect Mike Pence as he was sitting in attendance. “We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us,” actor Brandon Victor Dixon said that night. Trump later decried the moment, writing on X, “The cast of ‘Hamilton’ was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” (Pence has since disavowed Trump and refused to endorse him in 2024.)

In March, the show’s producers canceled its scheduled spring 2026 run at the Kennedy Center after Trump’s post-inauguration takeover of the performing arts institution. Miranda defended the decision to do so, saying at the time, “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center.”

The post That ‘Hamilton’ Tonys Performance Has People Convinced It Was an Anti-Trump Protest: ‘Mourning the Loss of the Ideal Democracy’ appeared first on TheWrap.

CNN’s airing of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s play about veteran CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, secured 7.34 million viewers globally. That number reflects U.S. and international CNN viewership, as well as the streaming numbers from both Max and CNN.com.

The presentation last Saturday marked a first for Broadway. Never before had a live play been broadcast and televised around the world. In the U.S., 5.64 million people interacted with CNN’s live broadcast of the five-time Tony-nominated play. Abroad, the play saw 1.7 million interactions.

Specifically when it came to linear viewership in the U.S., 2 million viewers over the age of 2 tuned in to the event, making it the No. 1 program in the country when it came to cable television for the evening. As for viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, the event was seen by 223,000 viewers and ranked No. 3 in all of cable during the time period, behind only ESPN and ESPN2. “Good Night, and Good Luck” also marked CNN’s second-highest primetime delivery of the year in the 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. time slot.

As for streaming, the play was the No. 3 most-watched CNN event of the year on Max for subscribers across all ad tiers. Peak concurrent digital viewing on CNN.com was 67,100 at 8:33 p.m. during the closing monologue of the play, which implies there was a strong audience during the entirety of the performance.

Overall, CNN’s airing of the play greatly boosted its reach. The live performance was seen by a total of 155,000 people throughout its entire Broadway run, an insider familiar with the matter told TheWrap. That means CNN’s airing marked a 4,635% increase in reach compared to its Broadway run.

An adaptation of Clooney and Heslov’s 2005 film of the same name, “Good Night, and Good Luck” follows the conflict between Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. The play, which premiered on Broadway in March of 2025, was directed by David Cromer and stars Clooney as Murrow, making his Broadway debut.

The post CNN’s Broadcast of George Clooney’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ Reaches 7.34 Million Viewers Globally appeared first on TheWrap.