'Broadway is money, not a dream': Shin Chun-su grossed $146m and still can't fill his pockets

"It's not a dream — it's money. Money, money."

When Shin Chun-su, CEO of OD Company, told the owner of the Shubert Organization that Broadway was his dream, the reply was bluntly pragmatic. The Shubert Organization controls 17 Broadway theaters in New York and is the largest theater company in American show business. That razor-sharp response stayed with Shin for a long time.

Shin became the first Korean producer to serve as sole lead producer on Broadway, and in doing so learned the weight of money as keenly as the weight of a dream. At the world premiere press conference for the musical "Wuthering Heights," held Tuesday at SKY31 Convention in Lotte World Tower in Songpa-gu, Seoul, he said producing "The Great Gatsby" had driven the lesson home. "What ultimately moves Broadway is enormous capital," he said.

By the numbers, the show looks like a success. "The Great Gatsby" opened at the Broadway Theatre in April 2024 and surpassed 1,000 performances on Sept. 17. According to the theater trade publication Playbill, the musical's cumulative gross reached approximately $146.1 million through Oct. 25. For the week ending Sunday, the show took in $860,000 with a seat occupancy rate of 79 percent.

Yet Shin has not made a fortune from the production. Pre-production costs alone reached $25 million, and weekly theater rental and performance fees drain another $800,000 to $1 million, meaning that even after more than 1,000 performances, almost nothing has landed in his pocket. The company, which initially projected breaking even within about a year of opening, has now pushed that target to 2028.

"Everyone tells me to be proud — that I'm a successful producer. But I always tilt my head and wonder: 'I've succeeded, so why aren't my pockets full?'"

In Korea, a show's success is typically measured by revenue and break-even, but Shin calculates differently. "My actual pockets may be light, but the intangible assets could be worth trillions of won," he said. Those intangibles, as he defines them, include his creative and producing involvement as lead producer, global performance rights to a major intellectual property, the network he has built in New York since his Broadway breakthrough, and the way the industry now perceives him.

Broadway had long been a closed door for Shin. He first knocked in 2009 with the Korean-American co-production "Dreamgirls," but never made it through. As lead producer, the Tupac Shakur music musical "Holler If Ya Hear Me" (2014) closed after 38 performances, and "Doctor Zhivago" (2015) after just 23. The losses were enormous, and Shin earned the nickname "the Don Quixote of theater." The Broadway Theatre where "Doctor Zhivago" shuttered in quiet defeat is the very same house where "The Great Gatsby" has been running ever since — nine years later.

Even the comeback of "The Great Gatsby" drew a divided critical response. Shin acknowledged that the show "did not receive good reviews from critics and journalists, but was loved by audiences." His assessment is that the old formula — Tony Awards and critical acclaim translating directly into box-office success — no longer holds as reliably as it once did. On the London West End run from April to September 2025, he said it "was a limited run with a set end date from the outset, and it ended very well," adding that the production is now waiting for a theater.

The sore spot was actually Seoul. The GS Arts Center production, which ran from August to November 2025, suffered cancellations early in its run due to mechanical failures. The Korea Arts Management Service, in its report analyzing third-quarter 2025 ticket sales, noted that the show ranked among the top 10 musicals by ticket revenue in the quarter, but that negative sentiment spread early — stemming from cast substitutions and technical malfunctions — and ticket sales fell short of expectations. For a production returning in triumph after New York and London, the audience response at home was lukewarm.

The broader market has also cooled. "Broadway's production costs have risen so much that it is hard to keep a show running on ordinary revenue," Shin said. "On top of that, the market as a whole slowed sharply in 2025 and 2026. The world has become a rough place, and tourists are not going to shows." He offered a comparative benchmark: if Broadway is 100, the West End is 80 and Korea is around 70 — and Korea, he noted, has also risen dramatically. He cited Andrew Lloyd Webber's public remarks about the "unsustainable costs" of new productions after the three-time Tony Award winner "Cats: The Jellicle Ball" closed in August, just four months after opening, as a reflection of the same pressures.

Shin's next card is Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights." The musical, which takes its title directly from the novel, is set to have its world premiere in Seoul, opening Jan. 26, 2027, at the Seoul Arts Center CJ Towol Theater and running through Feb. 28. It will be the first time Shin has staged the world premiere of a Broadway- and West End-bound production in Seoul. "Until now, the world premieres of works I developed were mostly held in New York or abroad," he said. "This one I wanted to do in Seoul."

The primary reason is that the show's backbone is Korean. The book and lyrics for "Wuthering Heights" were written by Han Jae-eun, known for the musicals "Fan Letter" and "Vanishing," and the music was composed by Jo Woo-in. By contrast, "The Great Gatsby," currently running on Broadway, was conceived by Shin but created largely by an American team — composer Jason Howland, book writer Kait Kerrigan and director Marc Bruni.

Composer Jo studied composition at Hanyang University before pursuing graduate studies in New York. Jo won the original musical award at the 2021 Daegu International Musical Festival with "Special 5," but has not yet broken through as a marquee name in large-scale productions. Shin himself said Jo "is not yet a mainstream composer," adding, "I recognized this person's musicality a long time ago." The production is, in part, an act of discovery.

The two have been developing the book and score together since 2020. Three domestic workshops — in February 2022, August 2022 and December 2023 — brought the narrative and music largely into shape, and an international creative team joined from the fourth workshop in September. The lineup includes British director Michael Fentiman, who received an Olivier Award nomination for "Amélie"; set designer Max Jones; and lighting designer Tim Lutkin, who won both the Tony and Olivier awards for "Life of Pi." Jason Howland, who composed "The Great Gatsby," returns in a different role this time — as music supervisor, handling arrangements and orchestrations.

"With 'The Great Gatsby,' I struggled line by line with an English script," Shin said. "Working with Korean writers, I found the narrative density and emotional arc building up layer by layer." The production moves beyond the destructive love of Heathcliff and Cathy, shifting its gaze to the next generation — Cathy's daughter Catherine and Hindley's son Hareton. One actor plays both mother Cathy and daughter Catherine in a dual role.

Korean musicals typically open after a brief setup period and refine the production in front of live audiences, with numbers and scenes often revised between an original run and a revival. Broadway works differently. New productions go through tryouts — trial performances at nonprofit theaters and similar venues — where direction, design and choreography are tested on a real stage and revised before the show opens to the public.

"Wuthering Heights" imports the Broadway production model and adapts it to Korean conditions. OD Company has rented the CJ Towol Theater for three months, but the public performance period is only five weeks. The remaining two months are devoted to stage setup, technical and dress rehearsals, and closed previews. Though not open to the public, those two months effectively serve as the tryout. The plan is to present a fully finished production on opening night.

"Normally, you set up quickly, go straight into previews, and the window for revision is not very wide," Shin said. "Jan. 26 is the day we present a completed work." He added that he intends to "accept criticism squarely" on opening night.

The finances will not add up. "Honestly, even selling 100 percent of tickets will not generate a profit," Shin said. "I concluded early on that raising ticket prices is not the answer." Even as production costs have driven ticket prices sharply higher across the industry in recent years, Shin said he intends to keep pricing for "Wuthering Heights" at a reasonable level. He compared the upfront costs to research and development investment by an IT company — expenses to be recouped through a long run. The next destination after Seoul is London's West End, the home of the source novel.

"Wuthering Heights" is the first of three new productions OD Company plans to premiere in 2027. In March, the company will stage the world premiere of "August Rush" at the Old Globe in San Diego, and in May it will premiere "The Great Delusion" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, in collaboration with "The Lion King" director Julie Taymor. Shin credited the access to top-tier American nonprofit theaters to "the foundation that 'The Great Gatsby's' success built." The intangible assets that never appear on a profit-and-loss statement, he said, have opened the path to the next work.

Charging ahead like Don Quixote, Shin said that while he once felt confident of success, "now I am afraid of the outcome. The closer a production gets, the more afraid I become."

"Lately I've been physically worn out — burnout feels like it's always just around the corner. So I walk every night. And while I walk, I think: why am I doing this? Right — because I want to be happy."