80% of shows don't recoup.

Nobody knows anything.

I always say William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride

and all the president's men, among many other things,

he said about the film business, nobody knows anything.

And so I always use that because we have no idea what's going to work.

We're going on our gut and our passion and our belief. So who's to say?

I'm Mary Long and that's Jill Furman. She's a Broadway producer, one of the people who helped

bring Hamilton, which has grossed over a billion dollars since its 2015 debut,

to Broadway and beyond. I caught up with Jill to talk about the business of Broadway.

We also discussed how to find investors to finance shows when most projects don't even make back their initial investment,

what made Hamilton work, and theater's scalability problem.

Jill, the world of theater is kind of its own little island. So maybe you can start by giving us an idea.

For those that are unfamiliar with the business of theater,

what is it that a Broadway producer actually does?

A Broadway producer wears many hats, and there are a lot of different ways to be a Broadway producer.

If you look at the Playbill title page, you'll see a lot of names usually above the title.

And that's because there are lead producers, which is what I generally am, and we're the people

who shepherd the whole show from beginning to end. And we're responsible for literally everything,

developing it, raising money, overseeing the casting, the marketing, the advertising,

making decisions about when we should close, if we can raise a priority

loan to keep running. So many, many questions that we answer. But there are also co-producers

...