‘Mamma Mia’ on Broadway to end after 14 years, creator ‘toying around’ with movie sequel

“Mama Mia,” the eighth longest-running show in Broadway, will end its 14-year run Sept. 5.

Since its October 2001 opening, “Mamma Mia!” has grossed more than $600 million in New York.

“It’s amazing we’ve sailed through a decade and a half, and I think it’s the right time to go,” producer Judy Craymer told the New York Post. “We want to have a fun and buoyant summer and go out with grace.”

She has produced a show that’s played more than 400 cities in 16 languages and has a worldwide gross of more than $2 billion.

Craymer told the New York Post that she opened the show in London in 1999 working out of a small office with a “borrowed phone and a borrowed computer.”

Today “Mamma Mia!” headquarters are in a mansion behind the Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly Street. On the wall of Craymer’s office are six clocks, so she can keep track of all the time zones in which productions of her show are playing.

Craymer also produced the 2008 movie, which ranks as one of the highest-grossing movie musicals of all time.  She told the New York Post that she was “toying around” with a sequel.

In New York, “Mamma Mia!” opened a month after the attack on the World Trade Center.

“Mayor Giuliani was out there encouraging Broadway to stay alive, and ‘Mamma Mia!’ was a part of that,” says Craymer. “It was traumatic, and we felt inadequate because all we were doing was ‘Mamma Mia!’ but we just got on with it.”

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