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Most of Cameron Mackintosh’s monster Broadway hits — “Cats, “Les Miserables,” “Miss Saigon,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Mary Poppins” — are decades old now. But two things have swung in the famous theater producer’s favor.

The first is that major new Broadway musicals, always high risk, now are widely seen as so prohibitively expensive to produce as to be inevitable loss makers. A case in point: “The Queen of Versailles” closes on Broadway on Dec. 21 with a loss of its entire $22.5 million capitalization, despite the presence of “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz, some favorable reviews and a high-quality star performance from Kristen Chenoweth. So far this anemic year for musicals, the Tony Awards are struggling to make up the desired number of nominations in the category of best musical.

The second is that social-media influencers and TikTokers have rediscovered the powerhouse shows of their parents’ generation for themselves, meaning that the celebrity wattages of the ever-canny Mackintosh, now 79, and his famous collaborator Andrew Lloyd Webber, 77, have not dimmed. Lloyd Webber is an industry legend willing to take risks on young collaborators like the director Jamie Lloyd, or the drag queens who will reinvent “Cats” on Broadway this spring.

They still have the sexiest shows and the 40-year-old “Phantom,” which opens yet again in Chicago on Saturday, remains the hottest of the lot.

“I think it was a big mistake to close ‘Phantom’ on Broadway,” the ever-cheerful Lloyd Webber says by phone from London. “We have just had our best season ever in London, even adjusted for inflation, even better than our original first year.  I don’t completely understand social media but those around me do. They just took over the marketing of ‘Phantom’ some two and a half years ago and found a new generation of young girls and women, especially. You have to remember that young girls and women also were the show’s original audience — they even published their own ‘Phantom’ magazine — but there is a new equivalent of that now, all following the show.”

Mackintosh argues somewhat differently about closing the marquee Broadway “Phantom.”

“We’d been running for more than 35 years,” he says from his U.K. home, late one recent evening, accompanied by the clink of a nightcap rum, “so for one thing, it was falling to bits. Really, the only sensible thing to do was to close it because, as with any show that has been running for years, otherwise you risk a show being seen as wallpaper. By closing down, we’ve actually been able now to reinvigorate the title and now, 40 years later, we’ve had the chance to completely redo it for this U.S. tour.”

That redo, which is bigger than many realize, is what is opening in Chicago this weekend after a preliminary tryout in Baltimore.

“It’s still very much the brilliant, original Hal Prince production with Maria Bjornson’s designs,” Mackintosh says, naming the two most pivotal “Phantom” artists (along with Lloyd Webber, of course), neither of whom are still alive.  “But we’ve brought all of the elements together again as if we were doing a brand new show, rather than treating it as a museum piece. There is technology you can use nowadays that we just didn’t have 40 years ago and that has allowed us, with the very judicious use of some digital projections, to move the show far faster than we ever were able to do before. We’ve brought back some of the original ideas that were discarded by Maria along the way and we’ve probably changed 70% of the show.  I think audiences are getting the grandest production of “Phantom” now that they ever will have seen.”

This is not the first time Mackintosh has redone one of big hits for the road; a new streamlined staging of “Les Miserables,” accompanied by an intense focus on stellar vocals, rejuvenated that show on tour, too.

This time around, Mackintosh has used some scenic elements from a prior U.K. tour and, of course, the costumes remain the same. So it’s a more cost-effective production at the same time as a fresh vista on the material; long gone are the days of “Phantom” needing a dozen trucks to traverse the country. Still, he says, “this production has cost a huge amount of money to put on the road, even though we’ve designed it to survive in this incredibly expensive era.”

What of the super-fans who know every beat of the show? Will they notice any difference?

“I think it depends how well you know the show,” Mackintosh says. “Something Maria always wanted from the outset was for the horse on the roof of the opera house to come alive, and that now becomes part of the deus ex machina at the end of Act 1. It’s really a far more elaborate version of the whole opera house than anyone has seen previously. The chandelier also now does far more things: it moves faster, it explodes and it is far more beautiful than it ever was before.”

“Phantom” has proven the most versatile of stories. Aside from the various competing versions over the years that had nothing to do with Lloyd Webber or Mackintosh, Lloyd Webber also recently approved, and clearly liked, an immersive version of the show, titled “Masquerade,” that Broadway in Chicago very much wants to bring to Chicago. It’s all part of a broad notion of keeping the pieces alive — as with the drag-queen “Cats,” a well-reviewed new take that is coming to Broadway in the spring.

“With Phantom and my other shows,” Lloyd Webber says, “we’ve always tried to reach an audience that does not regularly go to the theater. But I’ve found out over the years, sometimes to my cost, that while I believe in well-constructed musicals, the key always has to be the story. A great story can save an OK musical score but not the other way round.”

“Masquerade” is an example of a major trend: the purveyors of popular entertainment, even at the level of “Phantom,” looking beyond the traditional Broadway theaters due almost entirely to the cost of production there. Lloyd Webber made mention of Madrid and Barcelona, where live entertainment is thriving at lower cost. The expense of Broadway producing, and the lack of business-driven logic behind it, also explains the relative buoyancy of the West End of London, but also of the touring market, where a familiar show like “Phantom” in a big market like Chicago (with theatrical venues with greater seating capacity than in New York) still can do boffo business.

When pressed, Mackintosh says there is a chance this new “Phantom” might, in coming months, move into a Broadway theater for a limited run, as “Mamma Mia!” did this fall with remarkable fiscal success. “A ‘Mamma Mia’-style engagement would be the only way it would work now on Broadway,” he says, although one can discern he has thought hard about the idea.  Mr. Producer still is a Broadway baby, whatever its challenges.

“The big problem for Broadway,” he says, “is where are the new big shows that will be the revivals of the future? My little collection of classics have never been more in demand. I’m nearly 80. I find it hard to keep up.”

Dec. 11 to Feb. 1, 2026 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St.; www.broadwayinchicago.com

cjones5@chicagotribune.com