Book of Mormon Broadway Musical Scores Grammy Nomination

Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon" has been very successful for them. The won nine awards at the Tony Awards last year. for Today, they were nominated for a Grammy award for best musical theater album:  

 "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are competing against timeless composers Cole Porter and Frank Loesser for a 2012 Grammy Award. In the category of musical theater album, their new Broadway blockbuster "The Book of Mormon" was nominated Wednesday along with the albums for revivals of Porter's "Anything Goes" and Loesser's "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."

The musical theater category honors the composers and lyricists for a show, as well as the producers and principal cast members.

"The Book of Mormon," released by Ghostlight Records, features songs by Stone, Parker and Robert Lopez. Cast members Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells also were included in the nomination. The hit comedy won nine Tony Awards this year, including the award for new musical.

Not only has the "Book of Mormon" been success musically, but also financially since they have recouped all the cost of making the play and are now generating a profit from the play:

The critically acclaimed Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” has recouped its roughly $11.4 million capitalization after just nine months of performances, its producers said on Tuesday. “Mormon” is the first commercially successful musical from the 2010-11 season, which had an unusually large number of original musicals open, including the still-running “Sister Act” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and flops like “Catch Me If You Can” and “Wonderland.”

Since starting preview performances in mid-February, “Mormon” has broken the weekly box-office record at the Eugene O’Neill Theater 22 times. The show is regularly among the five highest-grossing productions on Broadway in spite of running in a theater with hundreds of fewer seats than most major musical theaters.

The producers make up for a small house by charging premium ticket prices of up to $477; as a result, theatergoers pay far more on average to see “Mormon” – about $170 during Thanksgiving week – than for other Broadway shows.

Given that people are willing to shell out money to pay premium to see this show, people obviously like the work of Matt Stone and Trey Parker and were confident that they would get their money's worth in seeing this play. But it was also a risk for them to be charging such high prices but the gamble paid off for them handsomely. 

Many LDS people are unhappy with this play because its disrespectful to our religion. I say, let them poke fun at us. We are a unique religion and there's no denying that. Rather than getting our feathers ruffled over it, let them laugh at us. Its ok. Some people will not want to learn about our Church because of this play. Perhaps a few people will. Overall, I think the result of this play is a positive one for the LDS Church and its members.