Broadway Shows Are Making A Killing At The Box Office… Of Movie Theaters

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 08: (L-R) Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, André De Shields, Amber Gray and Patrick Page attend the “Hadestown: The Musical” Premiere during the 2026 Tribeca Festival at BMCC Theater on June 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Getty Images for Tribeca Festival

“Proshot” musicals, or professionally filmed theatrical productions, have begun streaming online and opening in movie theaters, allowing audiences to skip Times Square. It is for the viewer to decide whether the recorded version of a show holds the same magic as a live performance, but in 2026, the filmed version of Hadestown surpassed Hamilton‘s 2025 proshot at the opening-weekend box office, grossing $10 million and providing further evidence of a growing revenue stream for theatrical productions.

It is important to note the difference between a proshot and a movie adaptation. Wicked and its sequel, Wicked: For Good, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, are movie adaptations. The universe of Wicked was translated to the screen and filmed like a feature. Proshots, on the other hand, take the stage production exactly as is and film it, so viewers can experience the Broadway production as if they were watching from excellent seats.

Movie adaptations have been around for a long time. Mamma Mia! in 2008, starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried, was the highest-grossing film adaptation of a stage musical, grossing $706.1 million, until 2024 when Wicked took the record with a gross of $758.1 million.

Proshot musicals are not reaching these numbers, but they are also less expensive to make. Wicked, not including the sequel, cost $455.8 million to produce, while Hamilton’s proshot cost only $10 million. When considering the box office numbers mentioned above, it might appear that Hamilton’s proshot barely broke even, but the film was also sold to Disney+ for roughly $75 million.

Not all shows are Hamilton. Few shows can reasonably expect to replicate Hamilton‘s success online or on Broadway. Nonetheless, many shows have begun to follow suit.

Some proshot productions open after the live theatrical productions conclude their runs. Fallen Angels will hit the theaters in October following the June close of the Broadway revival. Others, however, open while their Broadway counterparts are still running: Hadestown and Six The Musical Live! opened in summer 2026, and Oh, Mary! is set to debut on HBO in 2027. It is possible that producers are confident that splitting the audience between theatergoers and moviegoers will not affect box office numbers on Broadway. It is also possible that, in the eyes of the producers, the additional revenue from a proshot outweighs any potential impact on the live show.

Coincidentally, Six The Musical announced its Broadway closing date just two weeks after the proshot production opened in movie theaters. The Broadway production’s grosses were low in the week following the proshot premiere, but not the lowest of the summer. Since Six announced its closing, weekly grosses have climbed, though they have not reached their season high. In other words, there is no hard evidence in the box office numbers that the musical’s closing was related to the proshot.

Looking back to see how the proshot premieres affected other shows, one might note that the box office numbers for Hamilton showed a substantial increase for several months after Hamilton’s proshot opened in theaters, climbing from an average gross of around $2.1 million to $3.7 million. However, it is important to note that Leslie Odom Jr., one of the show’s original stars, had returned to the cast from September 9 to November 26, 2025, which coincided with the increase in box office grosses. Therefore, it is not sufficient evidence to claim that the proshot premiere was the cause of the increase in average gross.

The Broadway production of Hadestown showed no substantial change in box office numbers surrounding the proshot premiere on July 24, 2026.

Even the September 10 announcement of an upcoming Oh, Mary! proshot did not correspond with an obvious change in the Broadway production’s grosses.

While proshots provide shows with an opportunity to make additional revenue from essentially the same production, not all shows will choose to pursue them. Proshots, while much cheaper than movie adaptations, still cost a significant amount of money. For shows that have yet to recoup their $10 million or even $20 million capitalization, it may not make fiscal sense to spend several million more to record the production in hopes that the proshot might achieve what the live production could not. Instead, it seems likely that proshots will provide already successful productions with the opportunity to share their work with people who are unable to travel to New York or afford the price of a Broadway ticket.