"The Lion King". Photo by Joan Marcus.

Money makes the world go round in this week’s clinking clanking round-up of theater news:

• The Lion King proved it rules the entertainment jungle as it became the highest grossing Broadway show of all-time this week with $853.8 million in tickets. Previous title holder The Phantom of the Opera stands at $853.1 million. Suddenly, I don’t feel so bad for King’s director and partaker-of-royalties Julie Taymor (Spider-Man).

• Talk about money in the bank, the casting for the Central Park Into the Woods gets better and better. Hot on the heals of Amy Adams’s addition to the cast, producers revealed that Donna Murphy (Passion) will be playing the Witch. If you’ve seen her sublime work in the animated film Tangled, you know Murphy will be one mother of an overprotective mother.

• I still can’t get the songs from Newsies out of my head and I saw it weeks ago. Just to be sure I never forget a single “bruddah,” the cast album is now available for digital download. (PS. My favorite New Yawk rhyme in the show pairs “twirl it” with a very Flushing “terlet”.)

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  Molly Ranson in "Carrie". Photo by Joan Marcus.

  Speaking of cast albums that will get inside your head (literally), the recent Off-Broadway production of Carrie is officially going into the studio to preserve it for all time on April 17. The CD will be released by and available for preorder from Ghostlight Records. Ghostlight and Carrie. Of course.

• In, I assume, an attempt to cash in on men who don’t want to see a musical with their wives, the guys-night-at-the-theater niche got its next entry (following the warm welcome for last year’s Lombardi) as Magic/Bird opened on Broadway Wednesday night. The reviews suggest that this tale of basketball greats is well-acted but a little lacking in big game drama.

• I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are a LOT of shows opening on Broadway this month. That’s because they are all going for the gold, aka Tony nominations, and they’ve got to hit before the end of the month to be eligible.  Tony nominations will be announced on a live webcast at 8:30am, May 1 by Kristin Chenoweth and Jim Parsons. Join me, broadwayblogtom, on twitter that morning for some immediate reactions/analysis/grousing.

• And finally, in seriously green news, Bloomberg published an amazing article about the way profits are split on the blockbuster hit Wicked–including almost $90 million for the writers. Like my agent always says, ” In music theater, you either make nothing or millions.” And the mailman won the lottery, indeed…

Daniel Clarkson & Jefferson Turner in "Potted Potter". Image via David Gersten & Associates.

The stars, as in big name stars, are aligning on Broadway and we’ve got the scoop in a bite-sized theater news round-up:

• Harry Potter is coming back to the New York. Well, not exactly THE Harry Potter but the 2012 Olivier Award nominee Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience. The family friendly parody will play a limited engagment at the Little Shubert Theater starting May 19, promising to squeeze all seven books into seventy minutes…which basically makes the guy from One Man Star Wars Trilogy look like a total slacker.

• Oscar-nominee Amy Adams will be The Baker’s Wife in this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Into the Woods. No word yet on the rest of the leads but if this is the first announcement (and it’s pretty great casting, even if she strikes me more as a Cinderella), one has to imagine there are even bigger names to come. The mind boggles…Meryl as the Witch?

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  "Through a Glass Darkly". Photo by Ari Mintz.

  The first award nominations are out for the 2011-2012 season!  The Lucille Lortel Awards, given to excellence in Off-Broadway theater, and they feature a strong line-up of worthy works including Broadway Blog favorites director/choreographer Oscar-nominee Carey Mulligan (Through a Glass Darkly), Christopher Gattelli (Silence), An Iliad and Marin Mazzie (Carrie). Of particular note, the musical Once–now on Broadway–received a number of nominations which are likely to be matched at the Tonys.

• If the Tony Awards committee could bestow sainthood, you know that the second name on the list (after Audra McDonald, of course) would be Neil Patrick Harris for his telecast-saving turns as host. Look for him to add another miracle to his resume when he returns to lead the 2012 Tony Awards show in June.

• And finally, the biggest star of them all (at least in his/her fantasy world of retro-fabulousness) Charles Busch has another hit on his hands even before it opens. His latest vehicle, Judith of Bethulia, has already sold out all tickets for its limited run at Theater for the New City. That’s epic, indeed.