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Award-winning show War Horse is to extend its West End run after more than £3million of tickets were sold in its first 12 weeks.
The play is now booking until at least February. It has recouped all the costs of transferring from the National Theatre after it took more than £330,000 in a week last month - a record for a play at the New London Theatre.
Nick Starr, the National's executive director, said its success resembled a blockbuster musical rather than a serious play starring life-sized puppet horses. The show won Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards. Plans are going ahead for a second production to open on Broadway in 2011.
Handspring, the South African company which makes the moving puppets, is in talks to open a full-time factory in Cape Town to produce more horses for a production to tour the UK and elsewhere in Europe. Mr Starr said more than 300,000 people had seen the show since it first opened at the National two years ago. Now, another 150,000 tickets are being released.
War Horse, adapted from a children's book by Michael Morpurgo, tells the story of the First World War through a horse, Joey, who is taken from a farm in Devon to the trenches of France.
For Morpurgo, its successful translation to the stage is a particular delight as the book was written 25 years ago and sold fewer than 1,000 copies a year at its lowest point.
He said: "The National Theatre has made something that appeals right across the board. This extraordinary, intense, spectacular experience is truly rare."
Nicholas Hytner, the National's director, said: "I'm delighted that this astonishing production is engendering an equally heartfelt response from thousands of theatregoers."
