'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' breaks Broadway box office record in one week

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has only been open on Broadway for three weeks of previews but it’s already broken a box office record.

The Harry Potter plays, conceived by JK Rowling and Jack Thorne, has earned the highest single-week gross by a non-musical, making $2,138,859 (£1,509,820) in ticket sales.

The previous record holder was All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston, which earned $1.6 million during its first week of release in 2014.

It’s an impressive achievement for Cursed Child as some 300 tickets per performance at the 1,600 seat Lyric Theatre, are going for as little as $20, but it did benefit from public schools in New York being on Easter holiday.

It also benefits from the fact that play is split into two parts so patrons have to buy two sets of tickets to see the show completely. It costs between $40 $598 for tickets for both, for each person.

The original production opened at London’s Palace Theatre in June 2016 and many members of the cas, including Noma Duemzweni and Paul Thornley, who play Hermione and Ron Weasley, returned for the Broadway transfer.

It won a record breaking nine awards at the 2017 Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Play, Best Actor, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Director and looks set to earn similar acclaim at the Tonys.

However, the play was not as well received within the hardcore Harry Potter fandom as they felt it repeated storylines from the book and broke narrative and character conventions established in Rowling’s original book series.

Cursed Child is set nineteen years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and centres on the relationship between Harry, now a Ministry of Magic employee, and his younger son Albus Severus Potter, the latter of which is heading to Hogwarts.

“While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted,” reads the official synopsis. “As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is still running at the Palace Theatre, London.

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