Broadway’s late-August contraction continued this week, with overall grosses down again as the schedule keeps thinning ahead of the fall rush. But the topline decline masks one of the summer’s most dramatic single-show turnarounds: Moulin Rouge! The Musical, in its final full week before an August 30 closing, surged more than $1.1 million with the return of original star Aaron Tveit, more than doubling its prior week’s gross and topping the entire chart. Meanwhile, Paranormal Activity sold out its second consecutive week of previews ahead of tonight’s official opening.

Broadway Box Office Snapshot — Week Ending August 23, 2026

These are the official figures from the Broadway League, representing Week 13 of the 2026-2027 season.

Compared to the prior week (ending August 16), gross fell 8%, attendance dropped 3%, and average ticket price declined 5% to $113.35. Overall capacity slipped 1.51 percentage points to 86.00%. Year-over-year, against the equivalent week of the 2025-2026 season, gross was down 13% from $28,634,041, attendance was down 9% from 239,811, and average ticket price was essentially flat, down just 5 cents from $119.40. Show count fell to 26 from 27 as Ragtime’s closing the previous week continued to reduce the roster.

Moulin Rouge’s Farewell Surge

The headline of the week belongs entirely to Moulin Rouge! The Musical. The Tony-winning jukebox musical grossed $2,196,205 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, an increase of $1,111,547 over the previous week — more than doubling its gross — and enough to top the entire Broadway chart. The production played to 100.37% capacity with a top ticket price of $499 and an average ticket of $210.38, a wide margin over the week’s overall Broadway average of $113.35.

The surge coincides directly with the return of Tony winner Aaron Tveit, reprising his original role as Christian for the production’s final two weeks through August 29, one day before the show’s closing. Sales had already been building in the show’s final month, but Tveit’s return appears to have pushed demand into an entirely different tier, underscoring just how much drawing power a beloved original cast member can still command even in a show’s very last week.

Top Grossing Shows

Source: The Broadway League, via BroadwayWorld. * indicates the show’s penultimate week before closing.

Show-by-Show Highlights

Hamilton held firm in second place at $1,972,219, down a modest $150,917 week-over-week but still comfortably above 100% capacity. The Lion King settled to $1,821,416, and MJ continued its steady run at $1,729,644, up $43,161 and holding 97.13% capacity. Wicked and The Lost Boys both posted solid mid-table weeks, while Oh, Mary! and The Rocky Horror Show each cleared 95% capacity — Rocky Horror’s 7.55-point capacity jump was among the largest gains of the week.

Titaníque continued its recent rebound, up $115,374 to $815,333 with capacity climbing nearly 8 points to 82.80% ahead of its own September 20 closing. Hadestown stayed strong at 99.22% capacity, and Just in Time posted one of the week’s better capacity marks at 99.55%, up nearly 2 points.

The week’s most notable decline had nothing to do with ticket demand and everything to do with casting. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child dropped a striking $855,767 to $871,307, with capacity falling from a near-sellout 95.09% to just 71.23%, after star Tom Felton was out for the week on a scheduled vacation. The swing is one of the clearest illustrations this season of how much a single marquee cast member can move the needle for a play built around name recognition.

Elsewhere, & Juliet fell $90,308 to $622,559 with capacity dropping over 7.5 points, and Chicago and Stranger Things: The First Shadow both softened further, falling to 74.54% and 65.27% capacity respectively. SIX: The Musical posted the week’s lowest capacity at 59.91%, continuing a multi-week decline, and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) remained near the bottom of the chart at 62.07% capacity.

Paranormal Activity: Sold Out for a Second Week

For the second consecutive week, Paranormal Activity sold out the August Wilson Theatre during previews, grossing $729,250 — up from $422,257 in its partial first week — even with five heavily comped press preview performances included in the tally. The production, directed by Felix Barrett and written by Levi Holloway, opens officially tonight after previews that began August 14, arriving on Broadway following sold-out engagements in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Toronto, along with an Olivier Award-nominated run in London’s West End.

Capacity Deep Dive: A Widening Split Between Momentum and Drift

This week’s capacity numbers reinforce a pattern that’s now held for most of August: shows with a specific reason for urgency — a closing date, a returning star, an awards narrative — are consistently outperforming shows without one. Moulin Rouge (up to 100.37%), Titaníque (up nearly 8 points to 82.80%), and Just in Time (up to 99.55%) all posted week-over-week gains, while a long list of mid-run productions without any comparable catalyst continued to soften: & Juliet fell 7.55 points, The Outsiders dropped over 5 points, and SIX slid another 3 points to a fresh low of 59.91%.

The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child swing is really its own category — a temporary, casting-driven dip rather than a structural decline — and its capacity should be expected to rebound once Tom Felton returns. But the broader pattern among shows like Chicago (74.54%), The Great Gatsby (75.98%), and Two Strangers (62.07%) looks more durable, and worth watching closely as these productions head into the historically softer weeks before Labor Day and the fall opening rush.

How This Week Compares to Recent Weeks

Week 13’s $24.84 million continues a three-week slide from the $34.86 million posted at the end of July, though the story behind that decline has shifted meaningfully each week. The initial drop after July 26 was driven by a genuine demand pullback; the more recent declines have been almost entirely mechanical, reflecting a shrinking show count as Cats, Death of a Salesman, Every Brilliant Thing, and Ragtime all closed in quick succession. With only Moulin Rouge and Titaníque remaining on the closing calendar through September, and several new productions beginning previews in the coming weeks, this contraction phase appears to be nearing its end.

That timing lines up well with the traditional Broadway calendar. Late August is reliably one of the year’s softest stretches, and the market has historically rebounded once Labor Day passes and the fall opening season begins in earnest. This year’s version of that rebound will have extra weight behind it, given how much ground the season needs to make up against last year’s record-breaking pace.

Broadway’s Closing Watch: What’s Still Ahead

With Moulin Rouge in its final week, one production remains on the closing calendar within the next six weeks:

Closing dates as announced; subject to further extension or change.

Moulin Rouge! The Musical plays its final Broadway performance August 30 at the Al Hirschfeld, ending a seven-year run that included a month-long extension from its originally announced July 26 closing date. This week’s numbers, buoyed by Aaron Tveit’s return, suggest the production is headed for a genuinely triumphant send-off. Titaníque, meanwhile, has quietly been building momentum in the opposite direction of expectations — its capacity climbed nearly 8 points this week — ahead of its own September 20 closing at the St. James Theatre.

New Arrivals: What’s Opening Next

Broadway’s fall pipeline is now arriving in earnest, with several productions beginning previews or opening within the next six weeks:

Paranormal Activity officially opens tonight, August 25, at the August Wilson Theatre after two consecutive sold-out preview weeks — a strong early commercial signal for the strictly limited 20-week engagement, which stars Cher Álvarez, Travis A. Knight, Shannon Cochran, and Andrea Syglowski. School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play begins previews September 8 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre ahead of a September 28 opening, marking Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway debut nearly a decade after the play’s Off-Broadway premiere.

The fall calendar accelerates from there. Bill Irwin’s adaptation of The Imaginary Invalid begins previews September 25 at the Todd Haimes Theatre, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Ed Harris lead Other Desert Cities into previews September 29 at the Hudson, and Billy Crystal’s solo show 860 begins previews October 1 at the Imperial. With four new productions beginning performances within roughly a five-week span, the theatres vacated by this summer’s closing wave are filling back in ahead of schedule.

Musicals vs. Plays: A Reminder That Casting Still Moves the Needle

This week’s split outcomes for Moulin Rouge and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child offer a useful bookend on how much individual casting decisions can shape a production’s box office, independent of the underlying show’s popularity. Moulin Rouge, a long-running jukebox musical with broad brand recognition, still needed Aaron Tveit’s return to more than double its weekly gross in its final stretch. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, one of the season’s most consistent plays, saw nearly a quarter of its capacity evaporate the moment its highest-profile cast member took a scheduled week off.

Neither outcome is really about the strength of the material — both shows remain excellent commercial performers on a season-long basis. But together, they’re a reminder that even Broadway’s most durable titles can see dramatic single-week swings tied entirely to who’s on stage that particular night, a dynamic worth remembering whenever a single week’s numbers seem to tell a bigger story than they actually do.

Season to Date: Where 2026-2027 Stands

Thirteen weeks into the 2026-2027 season, Broadway has grossed $437,285,438 cumulatively, down about 5% from the same point last year, with total attendance of 3,566,636, down just 1% year-to-year. That’s a remarkably narrow attendance gap given how volatile individual weekly grosses have been all summer — a sign that even as high-grossing shows cycle in and out of the lineup, the underlying number of people walking through Broadway’s doors has stayed close to last year’s record pace.

The next several weeks will be pivotal for closing that remaining gross gap. With Moulin Rouge’s outsized final week and four new productions beginning previews or opening in September and early October, Broadway has a real opportunity to post some of its strongest year-over-year comparisons since the early summer, assuming the fall arrivals build audiences as quickly as Paranormal Activity has.

The Bigger Picture

Broadway’s late-August lull is a familiar seasonal pattern, but this year’s version has been sharpened by an unusually concentrated wave of summer closings. With 26 shows now running, down from 32 at the start of July, the market has genuinely contracted over the past two months — even as several of the shows that closed along the way, and several still running, have posted record or near-record weeks on their way out. That combination suggests the contraction has been more about deliberate producing decisions than falling audience appetite.

Attendance holding nearly flat year-over-year, even as gross lags by 5% cumulatively, points to a market where ticket pricing power has softened slightly rather than a market losing audiences outright. As the fall lineup fills back in over the coming month, that distinction will matter for how the season’s second half compares to last year’s record-breaking pace.

Ticket Pricing Trends to Watch

Average ticket price fell to $113.35, down 5% from the prior week and essentially flat year-over-year. Moulin Rouge’s closing-stretch average of $210.38 topped the board by a wide margin, followed by Hamilton at $184.41 and MJ at $160.49. Beyond the top three, pricing dropped off quickly, with most of the remaining chart clustered between $80 and $130.

At the low end, Aladdin’s $79.70 average was the week’s lowest, a reminder that Broadway’s biggest family-friendly titles continue to compete on volume and accessibility even during a summer when several closing shows have commanded genuinely premium pricing in their final weeks.

What Producers and Investors Are Watching

Moulin Rouge’s numbers this week offer a clear commercial lesson: bringing back a beloved original cast member for a show’s final weeks can meaningfully outperform even strong baseline sales, and producers of future closings may look to replicate the strategy. It’s a markedly different approach than Ragtime’s closing surge two weeks ago, which was driven by critical acclaim and awards pedigree rather than star casting — suggesting there’s more than one reliable playbook for maximizing a limited engagement’s final weeks.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’s swing, meanwhile, is a data point worth filing away for any production considering how much schedule flexibility to build in for star performers. A single scheduled vacation costing nearly $856,000 in a single week is a significant number, and it raises real questions about understudy marketing and how productions can better manage expectations, and demand, during a lead’s planned absence.

There’s also a real estate story developing in parallel. With Moulin Rouge vacating the Al Hirschfeld on August 30 and Titaníque set to leave the St. James on September 20, two more Broadway houses will need new tenants this fall, adding to the Winter Garden, Broadhurst, Hudson, and Vivian Beaumont, all freed up earlier this summer. Only a handful of the season’s confirmed fall openings have been matched to specific theatres so far, which means the next month of venue announcements will be worth watching closely for anyone tracking where the 2026-2027 season’s remaining new productions will actually land.

Off-Broadway and Beyond

Off-Broadway continues its own busy late-summer stretch as Broadway’s fall pipeline builds. With several solo shows and limited engagements having wrapped in recent weeks, and Broadway’s own new arrivals beginning to fill the calendar, the broader New York theatre ecosystem is entering its traditional autumn ramp-up in step with the main stem.

We’ll be back next week with the latest figures, along with continued coverage of Moulin Rouge’s closing, Paranormal Activity’s opening night, and the shape of Broadway’s 2026-2027 fall season as it comes into focus.

Reporting compiled from The Broadway League, BroadwayWorld, Broadway News, Deadline, Playbill, Broadway Direct, and Broadway.com. Figures reflect the week ending August 23, 2026, as reported by the Broadway League.