'The Lion King' Earns Broadway's All-Time Earnings Crown

The Lion King Broadway" src="//cfm.yidio.com/images/article/images/_606x397_5783.jpg" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; width: 300px; height: 197px; " />By Monday afternoon, a new monarch shall rule over New York City's Great White Way.

The Associated Press reports today that box office numbers forthcoming this afternoon will likely announce that "The Lion King", the hit musical based upon the like-named Walt Disney Co. animated classic, will have surpassed Andrew ?Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" as Broadway's all-time earnings king.

The current tally mark for the respectie once and future kings? For lyricist Tim Rice and composer Elton John's Disney adaptation, a cumulative $853,846,062 total gross, counting this past weekend's $2-million-plus take over $1.2 million for "Phantom"; for Webber's tragic tale of obssessive love, that brings the all-time take to $853,122,847. As the AP points out, "The Lion King" overtakes Webber's Broadway institution despite "Phantom" having premiered a full decade-plus earlier in 1988.

There's an interesting common thread somewhat uniting the two: "Phantom Of The Opera" producer Cameron Mackintosh also produced the Walt Disney Theatrical production of the iconic 1964 movie musical "Marry Poppins". "The Lion King" has been directed since its opening by Julie Taymor, who also directed 2002's Academy Award-nominated biopic "Frida" and was the original director of Broadway's "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark".

"It's a spectacle that satisfies on many different sensory elements - audio, visually, emotionally," said music historian Cary Ginell of Disney's most successful stage musical yet. "It's also good for all ages - just like Disneyland is. For the kids, it's the visual elements - the colors, the costumes and the puppetry. For the adults, it's 'Hamlet', basically. And the music is not geared to one age or gender or race. It's as universal as a show can get."

Though the straight-up grosses appear black-and-white, there are a few asterisks that must be taken into consideration.

For one thing, receipt-reporting trade group The Broadway League has "The Lion King" having grossed a cumulative $851,956,963 and "Phantom" $851,859,966 as of April 1, with the April 8 week numbers coming Monday. Additionally, neither set of totals takes inflation into account. Finally, at 24 years and running, "Phantom" remains Broadway's longest-running show and holds a lead on tickets sold (roughly 14.8 million) to its over 10,000 performances over Disney's record setter. By comparison, "The Lion King" ranks sixth on the longest-running list, with around 5,900 performances to its credit and a little over 10 million tickets sold.