Brow Beat

Hamilton Brings In a Record-Breaking $3.3 Million in Ticket Sales After Mike Pence Showdown

Coincidence?

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We’ll skip the Hamilton puns for once and get straight to the news: Just a week after being harshly criticized by President-elect and soon-to-be theater critic–in–chief Donald Trump, Hamilton broke (yet another) record, bringing in more money in a single week than any Broadway show in history. The musical grossed $3.3 million for its eight performances last week, according to the New York Times, beating out the record previously set by Wicked in 2013.

You may not have been following the feud between a man who will soon have the nuclear codes and a Broadway show that contains the actual lyric “I’m a general. Whee!” so let’s recap: Last Friday, Vice President–elect Mike Pence was booed by audience members while attending a performance of Hamilton, and at the curtain call, actor Brandon Victor Dixon, the show’s current Aaron Burr, read a statement expressing the cast’s concerns about the upcoming administration. Trump expressed his displeasure on Twitter (naturally), calling for the “rude” cast to apologize and attacking the show itself as “overrated.” This led some Trump supporters to call for a boycott of the musical.

Depending on your point of view, it’s either extremely easy or extremely difficult to boycott something that is already as exclusive as Hamilton. (Tickets for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s last performance in July sold for thousands of dollars on the secondary market.) What are you going to do, not buy a ticket for a show that it’s already impossible to get tickets for? But Hamilton saw the value of its premium tickets, which vary according to demand, actually rise last week, with some seats going for $998—and that’s just the official box office value.

That boost isn’t necessarily an endorsement of the show itself or any particular jab at boycotters, since tickets are sold way in advance and the record coincided with a holiday weekend. Still, Trump supporters must be feeling pretty—yeah, I’ll say it—helpless.