Carrie cost $8M and played 5 shows — Broadway's most famous flop

Conceived by Fame songwriters Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, with Stephen King's novel adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen and staged by RSC artistic director Terry Hands, Carrie: The Musical was a $5 million budget that kept growing. Nearly $4 million went on design alone — costumes, sound and hydraulically powered sets — and the production opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on 13 February 1988 without a contingency reserve. Barbara Cook, the original Margaret White, departed during the run.

Producer Friedrich Kurz, a West German impresario, transferred the show to the Virginia Theatre anyway. Previews split audiences between boos and standing ovations; the production capitalized at roughly $7 million and ran out of money. On 15 May 1988 — after 16 previews and five regular performances, less than 72 hours after opening — Kurz posted the closing notice without telling co-investors, calculating that an immediate close saved $150,000–$175,000 a week. Jujamcyn's Rocco Landesman called it 'the biggest flop in the world history of the theater, going all the way back to Aristophanes'.

The loss landed on the backers: British and West German investors lost their capital, while the RSC, paid for mounting the show within its own season, walked away with roughly $500,000 of profit. Kurz shrugged: 'I made an economic decision to cut my losses. Broadway is Russian roulette, and I'm not a gambler.' Gore's verdict was sharper — 'You can't produce a Broadway show without a reserve fund.'