Cash Flows From Elsewhere

This wee factoid caught my eye:

Aladdin, Newsies and the unsinkable Lion King tallied up box office receipts of $5,048,322 for the week ending Sunday. That’s a hair shy of 20% of the total box office of $26,391,544 for all 26 shows, according to the trade group Broadway League. The Lion King, pumped by an extra. ninth performance, took in a Street-leading $2,559,076 at the Minskoff. Newcomer Aladdin continues to improve weekly at the New Amsterdam flagship, taking in $1,570,266, up $57,802 from the week before.

Let's take these stats over to the light for closer examination.

Three Disney movie properties, two of them hit animated musicals and one of them a failed live-action tuner starring Christian Bale long before he was Batman, raked in almost one-fifth of Broadway's ticket sales.

One fifth. Most of that from animated features that have already made huge amounts of money for Diz Co. Small wonder that analysts keep upping the company's profit margins, even as Disney prepares to announce quarterly earnings.

Newsies,, though closing, is going up ... and up:

... "Newsies" -- which surprised even Disney Theatrical with the positive reception it received from audiences and critics -- has seen box office rise consistently over the past month and last week hit $919,050. ...