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UPDATE, 1:15 PM Saturday: Hollywood & Highland and Dolby Theatre owner CIM said today it will continue payments on the $30 million loan provided by Los Angeles city officials to lure Cirque du Soleil to the theater. CIM Group spokeswoman Karen Diehl issued a statement saying payments would be made as scheduled on the city loan OK’d by the City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “The loan is current, and CIM will repay the entire obligation of the loan in full,” the statement said.
PREVIOUSLY, 5:43 PM Friday: The Dolby Theatre will need to find a new tenant after the Oscars. Cirque du Soleil‘s IRIS, which has been the theater’s main tenant since Dolby took over sponsorship of the former Kodak Theatre on May 1, is closing earlier than expected. “After close to 500 well received shows at the world renowned Dolby Theatre, the last performance of Cirque du Soleil’s IRIS will be January 19, 2013. Despite phenomenal reviews and enthusiastic audience response, demand has not met projections”, Cirque senior director of communications Renée-Claude Ménard told Deadline in a statement late today. IRIS was originally scheduled to temporarily stop production on January 26, 2013, to allow time for set up of the Oscar show on February 24. IRIS was then expected to return to the Dolby in March to continue its run, but that now clearly is not going to happen. Ménard added that they would “redeploy as many of our artists and employees as possible to other Cirque du Soleil projects”. A 20-year deal was announced between Dolby and property owners CIM on May 1 that was contingent on the Academy Awards remaining at the venue. The Academy signed a 20-year deal with CIM the same day. Neither Dolby nor CIM responded to request for comment.
Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
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The show was fine, if uninspired as these Cirque shows go, but it was SO expensive that it was hard to make any sort of a value proposition out of it. The cost of tickets (mine were $140 each, for ok seats) must have ultimately impacted word of mouth. I know I could not in good conscience recommend it unabashedly.
Personally I like Iris better than O and tickets are a deal compared to O. I paid like 220 for a limited view seat.
And as a whole, Cirque shows are well done and well worth the price of admission. I went to Paris this summer and saw LIDO. That was a huge disappointment. It made Jubilee in Las Vegas look well rehearsed.
Too many productions. Too similar. GAP / Starbucks syndrome.
The simple truth is that, for a Cirque production, the show was mediocre overall.
Without much of a story & a lack of awe-inspiring acrobatics, Iris was my least-favorite of all the Cirque shows I’ve seen. This year’s Santa Monica show, “Ovo,” was spectacular! It was everything that Iris was not.
Sorry but OVO is boring actually.. IRIS is amazing compared with boring OVO.
Well, I, as well as the 15 various friends and colleagues I know that went to go see Ovo, thought it was amazing.
So I guess it’s a matter of taste….and a matter of offending someone who obviously works for Iris. Sorry, I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers. I’m sure all the Iris cast and crew work their butts off, but as a whole, the show just wasn’t a winner.
Well, indeed! Juan is obviously an Iris employee. It’s SO obvious from his simple post that he works for them and was paid to respond to your devastating, blindingly simple truth. Great riposte. You saw right through him. Good thing you didn’t allow his clearly (and certainly obviously) biased opinion to contrast with yours. How dare anyone think differently from you! Free speech averted. Whew! It’s all sooooooo obvious.
Wanted to go… but too much money.
Uhhh, SHOCKER?! They’ve been trying to sell half-off tickets the past three months on ticket-liquidating websites. Saw the show 6 months ago (half-off), it was great, on-par with some of the mid-tier Vegas Cirque shows, but really, this was never the market that could sustain someting like this.
Mayor Villaragrossa spent hard earned LA Tax dollars on subsidies to bring this to town, when most of us were against it. Obviously, it failed. What an idiot. (or a crook??)
I’d really like to know what the conditions were attached to this taxpayer money. Aside from being against it when announced, I would hope Cirque would need to repay a certain amount if they did not stay a certain number of years. I suspect there were no conditions, and taxpayer money was jsut flushed down the toilet (again).
Wow. Wasn’t Iris supposed to run in this theater for 10 years? And now it’s leaving after just 16-17 months. Guess the tourists didn’t find it compelling enough to shell out the advertised price.
I saw it earlier this year with a half-price Living Social deal (still available, by the way – $59 for a great seat with no service fees is a good deal). But I agree with JD – it’s a fun time, but not one of Cirque’s better shows. Too much reliance on lame comedy and not enough stunts. For such a long-term engagement, I was surprised they didn’t offer something more breathtaking.
“Too much reliance on lame comedy…”
I probably wouldn’t find them funny in Vegas if I weren’t boozing it up. I’d rather be dazzled than amused.
I haven’t gone in years, in spite of desire. Cost, cost, cost. To bring two adults and a child, you’re talking $500 for mediocre seats.
i’ve only ever been to on cirque show and it was okay, impressive for what it was (it was one of the earlier shows). i never went again because it was too much money to watch people hang from curtains. i understand people need to get paid, but tickets for anything nowadays, it’s just not enough to get me in through the door.
I’ve had the privelage of watching the original version. Such phenomenal performers all a star in their own right. With poor pre-advertising and PR before the start of their run, the show was left to this unfortunate future. Hundreds of talented people who are passionate about their work suddenly lost their jobs due to bad advertising and big unnerving egos. I love those kids. They have their hearts and souls!
Maybe they’re just clearing out space for an incoming west coast production of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
You are the winner of the comment section!
you just made me spit out my Coffee! hysterical.. YES 4 stars for that comment.
People do not visit L.A. with plans to see theater. If this were the case, the Ahmanson and Pantages would be driven by tourist dollars, which they aren’t. Theater in L.A. is driven by locals patronizing it. There was no way this was going to work for years and years. I was stunned when this deal was signed. Seems like as little thought was put into the Dolby theatre as was put into the design and concept of the Hollywood & Highland mall, which locals couldn’t care less about. From the traffic to the location to the parking to the stores, I avoid this entire complex like the plague.
Sometimes I need to get off the red line at this place and it is so stressful. Was designed by idiots.
As a Hollywood resident, I’ve lived a few blocks from Hollywood & Highland for almost a decade, and I still can’t figure out the design of that place. It’s simply terrible.
Although there were a few bright spots, this show never had the spectacular feeling you get from most Cirque shows. The music was exciting and the musicians very talented. The acts were not. On other cirque shows you have amazing staging technical effects which this show lacked. At $150 plus for tickets you want to be stunned by the presentation. I also agree with some who suggested there are too many cirque shows worldwide.
The biggest problem with Cirque is that they’ve diluted their product. When they had 2 shows in Vegas and the touring circus, it was a novelty and had an exciting aura. They never closed as show. As talented and skilled as their people are, you can only watch different interpretations of similar acrobatics for so long.
I’m disappointed – I’ve been three times, and while not *the best* Cirque show I’ve seen, it probably ranks third. And it gave Hollywood soul. I’ll definitely see it one last time.
It seemed odd at the time, that CIM (a multi billion dollar funded developer — funded mostly by CALstrs who are the teachers of California) had to have $30 million of our money or we just couldn’t have this AMAZING show. Garcetti and crew fell for the sob story — and gave them OUR $30M. So the Canadian circus came to LA with all the promised jobs for 10 years…
Many asked, why in Hollywood, the creative center of the world did we need a Canadian circus to tell us the story of Hollywood? Why did we need the taxpayers to foot the bill for renovating the theatre — but all the profits would go back to Canada? Why the did we EVER subsidize a Canadian circus in L.A. to begin with?
What are the terms of the loan (which is mostly Federally subsidized to boot). Why can’t we get ALL of our LA and USA money back from CIM Group NOW? They seem to have enough money to buy billion dollar projects in NYC. What do you say CIM Group? Give us back our loan and our interest NOW.
I doubt you have been so forgiving when you have vultured in on your competitors to buy defaulted projects in Hollywood. And you haven’t been so kind to tenants in your building who are behind in their rents. So, give us back our money — NOW. We never got our ‘bang for the buck’ in “10 years worth of jobs”. So, we need that money back — NOW.
Those clowns ruined the show. With the possible exception of Mystere, this is the thinnest cirque production I’ve ever seen. Bad for the brand.
You obviously didn’t see Viva Elvis.
From the hi-falutin name (“E-dees,” NOT Iris!) to the oh-so seriously artsy and important ads which never suggested Hollywood, or more importantly, fun, this show was doomed from the beginning. A show only a mother [or a self-aggrandizing mayor or city council with vaunted notions of their own social status (and lots of taxpayer money to throw away] could love.