Broadway spent $35M on King Kong — the ape got better reviews than the show

The plan was to put a real Kong on Broadway. After a 2013 premiere in Australia, the musical arrived at the Broadway Theatre with a $35 million capitalization and a six-metre, one-tonne animatronic ape — steel, styrofoam and air-powered 'muscles', suspended from a 17-ton crane and worked by 15 people, ten of them onstage puppeteers on ropes. Previews began on 5 October 2018; the show opened on 8 November.

The reviews landed like a falling gorilla. Critics called Jack Thorne's book 'stupefyingly banal', Eddie Perfect's score forgettable, and the production a 'gorilla-sized mess' — while almost everyone agreed the puppet itself, designed by Sonny Tilders, was a marvel. The Kong was onstage for only about a quarter of the show, and no amount of engineering could carry the rest.

The closing notice came on 25 June 2019: King Kong would end its run on 18 August, after 29 previews and 324 regular performances — less than a year on Broadway. The Tonys gave the puppet a Special Tony Award and the show nominations for scenic, lighting and sound design. The ape left with more hardware than the musical left with money.