Antonio Banderas’ Theater Loses Millions Each Year As a ‘Privately Owned Nonprofit’

Antonio Banderas has pushed back hard against reports that his Málaga theater, the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank, has left him facing financial ruin. In a statement posted to his social media accounts, the actor, director, and producer dismissed news coverage claiming that mounting losses from the venue’s ambitious productions had put his personal finances at risk.

The statement followed a report published this month by the Spanish media outlet Cuore, which, citing filings in Spain’s commercial registry, said the theater was running annual losses of more than 2.5 million euros. The Cuore piece, headlined around Banderas’s “business ruin,” characterized the venue as an investment that was not paying off, while noting that the actor could comfortably absorb losses of that size. It also reported that high staffing costs and the expense of maintaining the building were among the venue’s financial pressures.

Banderas rejected the framing directly. “The ruin I’m being made a victim of in certain outlets does not exist,” he wrote. “I’m sorry for those who might take a certain pleasure in it being true.” He added that it pained him to once again explain goals he has spelled out repeatedly.

In the statement, Banderas laid out how he sees the theater: a privately owned nonprofit that he runs with the mindset of a public institution. He stressed that the project takes no public money and said it never will as long as he is alive, with him personally covering the cost of staging large productions. “The Teatro del Soho CaixaBank is a private nonprofit company that operates more like a public theater,” he wrote. “That means the project receives no public subsidies and will not while I am alive. I take on the costs of these very expensive projects that you would rarely see at companies that have to report a bottom line.”

For Banderas, the point of the venue is artistic ambition rather than a balanced ledger. “I set myself only one objective: to do things the way I believe they should be done and to seek excellence in our productions, beyond whatever financial deficit they create, which, thank God, I can absorb without any problem,” he wrote. “That is the pact with my passion for theater, with my city, and with myself.”

The theater is a long-held ambition for Banderas, who acquired the venue in his hometown in 2017. He has said he had dreamed of running a theater since the 1970s, describing the stage as the setting for the happiest period of his professional life.

On the criticism over the company’s finances, Banderas argued that if he had been chasing profit, he would have picked a much easier business model. “If I had wanted to make money, it would have been very easy,” he wrote. “But I chose to do big productions, where I have given work to hundreds of people, and I have enjoyed myself like I never had in my whole career.” The venue has staged a run of major international musicals to a high standard, among them A CHORUS LINE, COMPANY, GYPSY and, most recently, GODSPELL.

The losses do show up in corporate filings, but Banderas said attendance tells the fuller story. He said the theater drew close to 200,000 people last year, counting both its Málaga programming and the Madrid transfer of one of its productions. He also thanked the sponsors backing the venture. Rather than scaling back, he promised to carry on. “We have managed to break the mold over these years, and we are going to keep doing it,” he wrote, before signing off: “No, my friends, I am not ruined, I am going full throttle. And I am threateningly happy.”