K-Pop Broadway Musical Closing After Two Weeks

Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman

K-Pop Broadway Musical Closing After Two Weeks

Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman

KPOP, a new Broadway musical about the world-conquering K-pop industry, is closing just two weeks after its late November premiere. As the New York Times reports, KPOP has been making far less money than is necessary to maintain a Broadway production, including a $126,493 gross last week. Its average ticket price of $32.06 is well below the industry average of $128.34. The show’s final performance will be this Sunday.

KPOP tells the story of a group of K-pop acts — a solo artist plus a boy band and a girl group — who are preparing for a US tour, with original music by Helen Park and Max Vernon and a book by Jason Kim. Reviews have been middling to negative, including a pan from the New York Times that producers for the show criticized as racially insensitive. The team behind KPOP had hoped that the genre’s fervent worldwide popularity would lead to booming ticket sales, but it apparently wasn’t to be. KPOP will still yield an original cast album, to be released in February through Sony Masterworks Broadway.

more from News