Judge allows ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ in San Francisco

The shows will go on. A judge has refused a request by one of the nation’s largest theater owners to block San Francisco productions of “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”

The ruling, issued Friday in the Court of Chancery in Delaware, pauses a bitter dispute between two prominent theater families, the Nederlanders and the Shorensteins, that were once allied.

The two families for decades jointly operated the three big commercial theaters in downtown San Francisco, but have been sparring for several years. Now Carole Shorenstein Hays owns and operates the Curran Theater, while the Nederlanders make the decisions at the Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters (although, complicating matters, Hays still has a 50 percent ownership stake there as well).

Nederlander San Francisco took legal action against Hays — not for the first time, but most recently — in September, seeking to block her from staging the two blockbuster shows at the Curran, arguing that doing so would violate an agreement between the families restricting competition.

But the judge, Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, did not agree, noting that the producers of the two shows “openly negotiated with multiple venues, which competed against each other to hold the productions,” and she denied the Nederlanders’ request to block the productions. It was not immediately clear whether the ruling, which came on a motion for a preliminary injunction, could be appealed, or whether the case might now proceed to a full trial.

The ruling was welcomed by Hays, a prominent theater producer and investor, heir to a substantial real estate fortune, who said in a statement that she was “obviously gratified by this verdict.”

Stacey Mindich, the lead producer of “Dear Evan Hansen,” declared herself “extremely pleased” and ready to present the musical at the Curran as planned, with a first performance Wednesday; City Hall in San Francisco is scheduled to be lit up in blue Thursday to mark the show’s local opening.

Neither an executive at Nederlander San Francisco nor the company’s lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment.