'Paranormal Activity' Opens on Broadway as 'Ragtime' Exits on a Record High
A stage adaptation of "Paranormal Activity" officially opened at the August Wilson Theatre on August 25, 2026, for a limited 20-week run — and it arrives with the kind of early box office numbers producers want to see in preview, the pre-opening performances used to test a show in front of paying audiences.
The Broadway League's most recent grosses report, for the week ending August 23, 2026, lists "Paranormal Activity" with a gross of $729,250 and attendance of 9,496, playing to 100% capacity — every seat in the house sold. A week earlier, the show had grossed $422,257 across its first four previews, also at 100% capacity, according to Deadline. That jump from four performances to a fuller week gives a clearer, if still early, picture of the show's earning power.
Written by Levi Holloway and directed by Felix Barrett, "Paranormal Activity" adapts the found-footage horror franchise for the stage. The production is scheduled for 20 weeks at the August Wilson, one of the Shubert Organization's houses on 52nd Street.
The new arrival shares the week's Broadway story with a departure. "Ragtime," Lincoln Center Theater's revival directed by artistic director Lear deBessonet, played its final eight performances in the week ending August 16, 2026, grossing $1,963,666. That figure broke the show's own box office record and made it the highest-grossing production in Lincoln Center Theater's history, Deadline reported. Only "Hamilton" grossed more that week, taking in $2,123,135. "Ragtime" won the 2026 Tony Award for best musical revival.
The broader street felt the late-summer lull. Twenty-seven shows grossed a combined $27,003,040 for the week ending August 16 — a 20% drop from the previous week, a decline that typically accompanies the post-tourist crush of mid-August as family travel slows before the school year.
What makes the "Paranormal Activity" numbers worth watching is the through-line: 100% capacity across two consecutive weeks of reporting, from a four-preview sampling to a fuller schedule. That kind of early demand doesn't guarantee a long run — horror is a genre Broadway has tested only sporadically — but it does mean the show is opening to houses that are full, not half-full. The 20-week limited engagement gives the production a fixed runway, meaning the clock is already running on whether those sold-out previews translate into the advance — tickets already sold for future performances — that sustains a show once the opening-night attention fades.
