MR. SHIN GOES TO BROADWAY

An interview with Chunsoo Shin, the South Korean impresario making history as the solo lead producer of The Great Gatsby.

Jeremy Jordan, Eva Noblezada and the cast of the Broadway production of The Great Gatsby. Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Jay Gatsby only throws the grandest of parties, and on Broadway, The Great Gatsby is one big party. Capitalized at $25 million with weekly running costs ringing in at more than $900,000 per week, the new musical doesn’t skimp on scale. It’s got onstage cars, elaborate projections, and a cast of 22 bedecked in period-glam, Tony-nominated costumes.

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It’s a big swing for any producer—much less one who’s lead producing solo on Broadway for the first time. The Great Gatsby is the brainchild of Chunsoo Shin, head of South Korea’s OD Company, one of the powerhouses of the Seoul musical theater industry. He became the first Korean lead producer on Broadway when he joined the team of the short-lived Tupac musical Holler If Ya Hear Me (2014), and he’s since backed shows including Doctor Zhivago (2015) and Once Upon a One More Time (2023).

Now open on Broadway after a tryout run at the Paper Mill Playhouse last year, The Great Gatsby faces some significant headwinds. For one thing, there are the difficulties confronted by every new show in a current Broadway landscape where costs continue to climb, suburban and tri-state audiences haven’t yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, and the 2023-24 slate of new musicals was so crowded it was hard for any single production to stand out.

When The Great Gatsby opened April 25, reviews were middling, and since then the show has been largely left out of the Tony Awards conversation save for its lone nomination for Linda Cho’s costume design. Weekly box office has been encouraging from the start (and in recent weeks has hovered between $1.1 million and $1.3 million), but with costs as high as they are across the board, those numbers will have to hold steady to make it a Broadway success. And then there’s the entirely separate adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel—simply titled Gatsby and hailing from a buzzy creative team including Florence Welch (of Florence + The Machine) and Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok—opening at A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass., in June and gunning for a Broadway spot that might put it in direct competition with The Great Gatsby.

But if you happen to walk by the Broadway Theatre just as a Wednesday matinee is getting out—as I unwittingly did a couple weeks back, only to get caught in a riptide of exiting teenagers—you can spy the possible paths to success. As a Broadway box office guru later confirmed for me, The Great Gatsby has been a major draw this spring for school audiences, and given the book’s status as a Great American Novel that students read in high school English classes across the country, that’s an evergreen audience base. It’ll help the show not only in New York but all around the U.S. when a tour hits the road.

It doesn’t hurt, too, that the property is widely known both here and abroad thanks in part to four movie adaptations, the most recent of which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and grossed $350 million at the global box office. Around the world, the title conjures associations with an over-the-top glamour that seems a good fit for Broadway razzle-dazzle—which the supersized, technically ambitious production aims to deliver. Throw in the novel’s fabled, thwarted love story, and you’ve got the kind of spectacle-romance that tends to do well in any language.

Throughout his career, Shin has made it clear that he’s a producer who’s as interested in the international market as he is in local success. His success in Seoul, paired with his years of experience in New York, give him a unique perspective on the differences between the two cities and the potential for continued collaboration and transnational development. So I sent him some questions (via email for ease of translation) to hear from him directly.

In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I highlight:

• Shin’s interest in Gatsby and why he thinks it’ll resonate around the world,

• why he chose to develop the show with an American creative team,

• the key differences between Korean and American funding models and audience demographics,

• the Korean market’s current hurdles, and

• where in the world he plans to take The Great Gatsby next.

Let’s make like we’re Gatsby characters and get a wiggle on.

The producer Chunsoo Shin at the opening of The Great Gatsby at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Photo: Rebecca J Michelson

MEET THE PRODUCER

Chunsoo Shin founded the Seoul-based production company OD Company in 2001, just as Broadway-style musical theater was beginning to catch on with South Korean audiences, and since then OD has grown into one of the country’s busiest and most successful players. Among its headline hits is the company’s award-winning and uber-popular production of Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll & Hyde, which first played Seoul in 2004 and cycles back into the city every few years; in the last decade alone it’s had runs in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2021. In recent years, OD’s production of another Wildhorn musical, Death Note, won the 2023 Korea Musical Award for best musical, and Il Tenore—an original show from an international team of creators, with a story inspired by the true story of South Korea’s first opera tenor—debuted in December.

In addition to his Broadway work, Shin has also had shows in China (Jekyll & Hyde), Japan (Man of La Mancha) and Australia (Doctor Zhivago). At home, he’s received the Best Producer Award at the 2009 Korea Musical Awards and the Prime Minister’s Citation at the 2020 Korean Popular Culture and Arts Awards.

Here’s what he has to say.