Two weeks ago we wrote up Paranormal Activity starting previews and had to end it with a shrug: no lottery, no rush, nothing in the catalog, check back. The line we used was that a discount program was a read, not an announcement.
The read was right. The show opened Tuesday at the August Wilson, and there is now a $40 Lucky Seat lottery and a $40 TodayTix rush on the board.
The $40 lottery, and the part that makes it unusual
It’s a Lucky Seat digital lottery, open entry, and the price is stated all-in including fees — which puts it in a club of exactly two shows on the entire Broadway board that say so out loud. (The other is The Book of Mormon.) Forty dollars means forty dollars. Enter online, winners get an email.
The timing is the standard Lucky Seat pattern and it is the thing people get wrong: weekday entries close at 9:30 a.m. ET the day before the performance, and weekend plus Monday performances all close at 9:30 a.m. on the Friday before. So a Saturday-night ticket is a Friday-morning decision. Miss the Friday and the whole weekend is gone.
The show page has the entry links and the current details.
The rush, if you’d rather not wait on a draw
TodayTix is running a $40 digital rush, day-of, while seats last — and to their credit the listing spells out that the $40 includes an $8-per-ticket fee. That’s the honest version of a rush price and I wish more of the board did it. Open the rush section in the TodayTix app, buy same-day, subject to whatever is left.
Two routes at the same number is a nice problem. The lottery costs you a day of lead time and gives you better odds of a real seat; the rush costs you nothing but a morning of refreshing.
What the show actually is
Not a movie adaptation — an entirely new story, written by Levi Holloway and directed by Felix Barrett, the Punchdrunk founder behind Sleep No More. That pedigree is the whole reason to care: this is a horror play built by someone whose entire career is about what a room does to an audience, staged in a Broadway house rather than a warehouse you wander through.
Four actors, including Travis A. Knight, Cher Álvarez and Shannon Cochran. It’s a strictly limited engagement at the August Wilson, and our catalog currently carries the run through January 3.
The rest of the board this week
Moulin Rouge plays its last performance Sunday, August 30. The $49 Lucky Seat lottery runs right to the end, on the same weekday-9:30-a.m. / Friday-for-the-weekend clock as Paranormal Activity — which means Friday morning is the last entry window that can win you a ticket to the final weekend. After that the Hirschfeld goes dark until Paddington moves in next spring. We covered the closing in full in Moulin Rouge’s final two weeks.
Titanique closes September 20 and is quietly one of the better-value tickets left standing: a $49 Lucky Seat lottery, a $49 TodayTix rush, and a $45 in-person rush at the St. James box office. Three doors into the same room.
Off-Broadway, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been closes September 11 at City Center Stage I, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee — which had been on the September closing list — has been extended at New World Stages through October 11. Its $39 Telecharge lottery goes with it.
And the fall wave starts in two weeks
September 8 is the first preview for School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play at the Friedman, and after that they come steadily: The Imaginary Invalid on the 25th, Other Desert Cities on the 29th, 860 at the Imperial on October 1.
None of them has a lottery or rush in the catalog yet, and Paranormal Activity is the reason to be patient about that rather than annoyed. Programs land at or just after first preview, not at announcement — which is exactly what we said in every fall first preview, and exactly what just happened.
Broadway Week also runs September 8–20 with 25 shows at half price, so the first two weeks of September are going to be a genuinely cheap stretch. The full guide, including the shows where the lottery still beats half price, is in the Broadway Week fall 2026 rundown.
What to do about it this week
If you want Paranormal Activity, enter the Lucky Seat lottery the day before you want to go, and set the alarm for 9:30 a.m. If you want Moulin Rouge, Friday morning is the deadline, full stop. Everything currently drawing is on the lottery hub, updated daily.
