RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Released by Bleecker Street 's event cinema label Crosswalk with LD Entertainment, the film brought in $10.2 million at the domestic box office from just shy of 2,000 screens. It's the highest opening for a Broadway live capture ever, just ahead of "Hamilton," which Disney released theatrically in 2025 and made $10.1 million. Crosswalk was planning only a five-day special event release for " Hadestown ," but the numbers were so strong that it will remain in theaters at least another weekend, and it has the potential to surpass "Hamilton's" $16.9 million domestic haul. Related Stories How Kiyoshi Kurosawa Turned a Samurai Whodunit Into a Chilling Story About Belief with 'The Samurai and the Prisoner' Greg Longstreet Celebrates Cinema — And His Show Business Family's Legacy — with His Indie Film Zine 'Ritual'
We wrote about Bleecker Street's Crosswalk banner back in March , when its first release, the concert film "Stray Kids: the dominATE Experience" following the K-pop band, managed to make $7.2 million domestic and quickly become one of the indie distributor's most successful releases in its history. "Hadestown" has already blown that out of the water, so something is clearly working for the upstart banner. The film is now Bleecker's biggest opening ever, ahead of Steven Soderbergh's "Logan Lucky," which opened to $7.7 million in 2017. Even after just a single weekend, "Hadestown" is already in Bleecker Street's top five releases ever.
At the time, the ethos Bleecker followed with "Stray Kids" was "scarcity drives urgency": that by making something into an event cinema release, it can pack fewer showings and reach a more targeted audience, and more meaningfully than a wide release concert film like this year's Billie Eilish movie. But the audience that showed up for "Hadestown" wasn't just fans. As Bleecker CEO Kent Sanderson explained to IndieWire, the film had an intentionally long window during which the distributor made tickets available for sale, and presale numbers were so strong that Bleecker was already requesting to extend that five-day run.
But the majority of the tickets sold were on opening weekend, encompassing some repeat viewing from diehards but also a lot of general audience attendance. Sunday's box office, which did over $2.5 million, vastly outperformed Bleecker's internal projections, which called for a 20 percent drop, though the film actually fell just 3 percent. Those Sunday actuals nudged "Hadestown" just above "Hamilton" for the opening weekend record.
Believe it or not, Bleecker didn't put "Hadestown" in theaters the week after "The Odyssey" just for #GreekMaxxing to capitalize on Greek mythology, but because it was practically uncontested this weekend between "The Odyssey" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day." Its next opening, "George Michael: The Faith Tour," is being targeted for December, specifically a week ahead of "Dune: Part Three" and "Avengers: Doomsday" as some strategic counterprogramming, even squeezing out a few IMAX screens before "Dune" comes in.
Bleecker Street also believes there's an untapped market there for live captures of Broadway shows. While "Hadestown" is a very successful Broadway musical that won eight Tonys and a Grammy since debuting in 2019, it's not the cultural landmark that "Hamilton" turned out to be. But Bleecker sensed the audience for such a show regardless, especially one that's been captured well.
Director Brett Sullivan, who also helmed Bleecker's 2023 release of "Waitress: The Musical" to a respectable $5.4 million domestic, led the capture of "Hadestown: The Musical" from its run on London's West End. Sanderson believes that the capture's quality and fidelity also fueled some of the film's word of mouth and will continue to do so for as long as theaters are willing to keep it.
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