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The advertising-and-word-of-mouth strategy worked for Evita (1979), which opened to unenthusiastic reviews yet ran for almost four years. But it is not infallible: an additional $1 million enabled the 1985 Singin' in the Rain to survive almost a year, yet apparently did not recoup the show's $5 million- plus investment. Still, says Carrie's composer Michael Gore, whose credits include the movie Fame, "you can't produce a Broadway show without a reserve fund. That is my major dissatisfaction with this show."
Carrie might have had just such a reserve if it held to its original $5 million budget. The show was eventually capitalized at $7 million, primarily by British and West German investors who had scant Broadway experience. But runaway costs reached, by some accounts, about $8 million, attributable partly to the high-tech fashion in current musicals, partly to the complexity of multinational production, partly to old-fashioned indulgence. Says the Royal Shakespeare Company's artistic director Terry Hands, who staged the show: "It started to be loaded with lavish trappings, none of which I believe were necessary." Sources involved in financing the project estimate that the show's design elements alone cost nearly $4 million, including about $1 million each for costumes, sound and the elaborate hydraulically powered sets. About a third of Jujamcyn's $500,000 investment was spent on repainting its Virginia Theater black, to suit Carrie's somber theme, and on installing electrical wiring for effects like the laser barrage at the climax, when Carrie burns down her school gym.
The Royal Shakespeare Company was paid for mounting Carrie as part of its season, and thus secured a profit of roughly $500,000. As a result of the unusual transatlantic production, there was a hefty bill for the transport and lodging of the creators and the Anglo-American cast. On Broadway, some 20% of each week's box-office income was set aside for royalties to the creative team, including Novelist King, who otherwise had no role in the show. Another debated expenditure was $500,000 plus for a print, poster and TV ad campaign in New York City before the show opened, much of it teasingly mysterious rather than hard sell.
As a result of all these costs, Carrie barely had carfare home after its Broadway opening night. There was no contingency plan, just a hope against hope for generosity from the critics. When that failed, Gore, Librettist Lawrence Cohen and Lyricist Dean Pitchford started shopping for emergency investors to create an instant reserve fund. Landesman pondered stepping in with more cash from Jujamcyn but in the end decided not to underwrite even one additional week's losses so the search for investors could go on. Explains Landesman: "I would have put up $500,000, but I didn't see the rest of the $2 million coming from anywhere." After a last forlorn scramble, neither did anyone else.