Disney let it go.

Frozen on Broadway, that is. According to the New York Times, Disney will not reopen the Frozen musical once the pandemic ends.

From the New York Times…

Disney Theatrical Productions said Thursday that its stage adaptation of “Frozen” will not reopen on Broadway once the pandemic eases, making the musical the first to be felled by the current crisis.

“Frozen” had been the weakest of the three Disney musicals that had been running on Broadway — the others were “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” — and the company made it clear that it does not believe audiences will return in substantial enough numbers to sustain all of those shows.

“This difficult decision was made for several reasons but primarily because we believe that three Disney productions will be one too many titles to run successfully in Broadway’s new landscape,” Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, said in a letter to his staff.

“Frozen,” which cost an estimated $25 million to $30 million to produce, arrived on Broadway in 2018 with high hopes because it was adapted from an enormously popular animated film. But the stage adaptation received unenthusiastic reviews from key critics and was shut out at the Tony Awards; its weekly grosses peaked at $2.6 million, but by February were averaging about $1 million.

It sounds as if the production never really took off in the way that Disney had hoped, so maybe it’s more of a mercy killing at this point. We have to wonder how many other Disney broadway productions may end their runs as the shutdown stretches on.

But hey, at least we’re getting Hamilton on Disney Plus this summer.

[Sourcee: NY Times, Hat Tip: A. Friend]