George Clooney‘s big Broadway debut in “Good Night and Good Luck,” which opened April 3, has broken the weekly record for the highest-grossing play in history.
The production, which the two-time Oscar winner stars in and co-wrote, grossed $3.78 million across eight performances in its first full week at New York City’s Winter Garden Theatre.
The average ticket price was $303, though some premium seating listed on the box office board neared $900.
The shattering of the record comes after Denzel Washington‘s starry revival of “Othello” broke box office records in March, bringing in $2.8 million in one week at the much smaller Barrymore Theatre.
“Good Night and Good Luck,” based on the 2005 historical film of the same name, recounts CBS news journalist Edward R. Murrow‘s groundbreaking exposé on Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist campaign during the 1950s.
Clooney played news producer Fred W. Friendly in the film, but stars as the legendary newsman onstage in his first play since “Vicious” in 1986.
“I’d been offered a couple of plays that I didn’t think I was right for, and I thought if I was going to do it, I should do something that I was right for,” he told The Associated Press. “This was an opportunity where I thought, ‘Well, I know how to tell this story.’”
The strictly limited engagement of “Good Night and Good Luck,” which Daily News theater critic Chris Jones said “scorches with the heat of today’s political turmoil,” runs through June 8.