A grand tip of the hat to Robin Leach for yesterday's big scoop -- which I just caught up on after a marathon of writing -- about Cirque du Soleil's plans for its big Michael Jackson extravaganzas. Leach caught Cirque CEO Daniel Lamarre at the 8000th performance of Mystere earlier this week and learned:* There will be two Cirque-MJ shows, the first being an arena production debuting in the Mandalay Bay Events Center that will run twice a night for at least two months starting Dec. 15, 2011. It will then tour North America. Tickets go of on sale for that on Nov. 3 of this year.
* A second sit-down Cirque-MJ thing will be created for a Vegas showroom and open in early 2013.
* The budget for creation and staging of these shows is a combined $250 million.
There's more, including some detail about the technology, in Robin's account and Q-and-A with Lamarre. I do have one minor quibble with Robin, which is that $250 million to create and stage two shows does not seem like that much to me. Ka cost $140 million and "O" cost $100 million, and that was long ago. But then again, look at this economy, huh? Sounds like a Vegas stimulus package to me.
