Here is the thing nobody at a Broadway box office will tell you: a good chunk of what happens on a New York stage eventually ends up on a screen you already pay for. Not the movie version with a Hollywood cast and a soundstage. The actual production, filmed in the actual theater, with the actual cast that won the Tony.
These are called proshots, and if you live somewhere that is not Manhattan, they are the closest you will get to the room. I have seen shows live and then watched the proshot later, and the camera catches things the mezzanine never will — which is a polite way of saying I finally worked out what was happening upstage in the second act.
Below is every way to watch Broadway online or in a cinema near you, sorted by what it costs. Then the part other guides leave out: seven of these shows are still running in New York, and there is a cheap way into every one of them.
First, a proshot is not a movie
Worth getting straight, because searching the wrong word sends you to the wrong thing.
- A proshot is a professionally filmed recording of the staged production. Cameras in a theater, a live audience, the set you would have seen from your seat.
- A film adaptation rewrites the show for the screen — new cast, real locations, cuts. Wicked in a cinema is this.
- A live TV broadcast is a third thing entirely, staged for a soundstage and shot for television.
When people say they watched Hamilton at home, they mean a proshot. When people say they watched Cats and need to talk about it for a while, they mean something else.
Free, or free enough
- PBS Great Performances. Select stage productions get filmed for the series and then stream free on the PBS website. Suffs on Broadway is up there now. The catch is that each one has an expiry date and then flips to buy-only — the Next to Normal capture from London ran out in July 2026 — so watch while the window is open.
- Your library card. Kanopy is free through more than 4,000 public and university libraries, and it turns up on the standard list of services carrying filmed theatre. Catalogs vary library to library, so yours may have a lot or almost nothing. Your branch may also have proshots on disc, which is deeply unglamorous and completely free.
- The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Its Theatre on Film and Tape Archive holds a large collection of Broadway and Off-Broadway recordings, viewable on site by appointment at no charge. Read the eligibility rules before you get excited: access is for theatre professionals, students and researchers with a work or study reason for watching, not for the general public. If that is you, it is the deepest archive in the country.
Already included with something you pay for
- Hamilton — Disney+. The original cast, filmed in 2016.
- Merrily We Roll Along — Netflix, added April 4, 2026. Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez in the revival that ran away with the Tonys.
- Come From Away — Apple TV.
- Suffs — free on PBS, as above, which makes it the best-value thing on this whole page.
One that people expect to find here and will not: the 1998 Cats direct-to-video recreation of the original staging is on Prime Video as a rental or purchase, not as something your subscription covers. It is also not the 2019 film that everyone is still recovering from, and not Cats: The Jellicle Ball, the ballroom-scene reimagining that closed at the Broadhurst on August 8, 2026.
Theatre-only subscriptions, with the real prices
- BroadwayHD — $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year direct, for hundreds of titles from Broadway, Off-Broadway, the West End and touring productions. The move: add it as a channel inside Prime Video instead and it is $8.99 a month, with a seven-day trial that the direct signup does not offer. Same catalog, less than half the price, and you get to try it first.
- National Theatre at Home — $12.99 a month, $129.99 a year, or roughly $8 to $12 to rent a single production. Filmed captures from London’s National Theatre, which is the best-funded proshot operation in the English-speaking world.
- Marquee TV — theatre alongside opera, dance and jazz.
- Met Opera on Demand — more than 900 full-length Met performances. Not Broadway, but if you are here for filmed live performance it belongs on the list.
In cinemas near you, which is the part that actually travels
This is the real answer for anyone outside New York. Filmed stage productions now get proper theatrical releases, in ordinary multiplexes, in ordinary towns.
- SIX The Musical Live! — in US and Canadian cinemas from August 14, 2026 — find showtimes or read the official page. Filmed at London’s Vaudeville Theatre with the six original West End queens, and about 90 minutes long. It already broke event-cinema records in the UK and Australia, so this is not a niche booking.
- Hadestown: The Musical — released July 24, 2026. Filmed in the West End with the original Broadway principals: Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, André De Shields, Amber Gray and Patrick Page.
- Fallen Angels — October 22. The Noël Coward revival with Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara, filmed live at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Broadway.
- Giant — November 19. John Lithgow as Roald Dahl, filmed at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London before the Broadway transfer.
Two more are filmed and waiting on a date: the Oh, Mary! capture from the West End, and a Netflix proshot of Stranger Things: The First Shadow. A Play That Goes Wrong capture was shot with the original cast back in 2022 and has never been released.
Seven of these shows are still running — here is the cheap way in
This is the section I actually wanted to write. Every guide hands you the streaming list. Nobody tells you which of those shows you could be sitting in front of next month for the price of a decent dinner.
Every figure below is a current lottery or rush price from our own show data:
- Hamilton — Richard Rodgers Theatre. The Ham4Ham lottery is $10, and unlike most it runs weekly rather than daily: entries open Friday and close the following Thursday. Watch it on Disney+, then read how the Hamilton lottery actually works.
- SIX — Lena Horne Theatre. $45 through the Broadway Direct lottery, which closes later in the day than most Broadway Direct shows. Students get $35 rush at the box office with a valid ID, and there is $49 standing room when a performance sells out.
- Hadestown — Walter Kerr Theatre. $49 through Lucky Seat, plus $39 standing room on sold-out nights.
- Oh, Mary! — Lyceum Theatre. $47 lottery through Telecharge, drawn twice a day, plus $43 general rush in person.
- Heathers: The Musical — New World Stages, Off-Broadway, through November 8. $38 lottery and $38 rush, both through Telecharge. The London capture has drifted off streaming, so right now the New York company is the only way to see it at all. More like this in the Off-Broadway lotteries nobody enters.
- The Play That Goes Wrong — New World Stages. $35 lottery run by the production itself, with entries closing two days ahead of the performance.
- Stranger Things: The First Shadow — Marquis Theatre, through January 3, 2027. $45 Broadway Direct lottery, or $40 in-person rush at the box office.
One bonus with no filmed version anywhere, which is why it is not in the seven above: Chicago has run continuously on Broadway since 1996 — opening at the Richard Rodgers, then the Shubert, and at the Ambassador since 2003 — and it still does same-day rush and standing room at the box office. Confirm the price at the window, because that one moves.
If lotteries are new to you, the first-timer’s walkthrough gets you entered in about ten minutes, and lottery, rush and standing room explained covers what separates them. Still carrying a student ID? Student Broadway tickets is the longest guide on this site, for good reason. Willing to stand? Standing room is the hack tourists never use.
The ones you can only see on a screen now
Four titles on this page have closed on Broadway. For the first three, a screen is the only way left in:
- Merrily We Roll Along — closed at the Hudson in July 2024. On Netflix, so this one you can start tonight.
- Giant — closed at the Music Box in June. In cinemas in November; showtimes are not on sale yet, so set a reminder rather than a bookmark.
- Fallen Angels — closed at the Todd Haimes in June. In cinemas in October.
- Joe Turner’s Come and Gone — closed at the Ethel Barrymore in July. No capture of the Broadway run has been announced. What is coming is a Netflix film adaptation, with Taraji P. Henson carrying her Bertha Holly over from the stage.
This is the honest argument for proshots. A Broadway run ends and the thing is simply gone — no revival, no tour, nothing. A filmed capture is the only reason anyone will see Radcliffe and Groff in that Merrily twenty years from now.
When you do come to New York
Every proshot is a trailer for the live version, and the live version costs less than you think. Start at the Broadway lottery hub, which lists every running show with a lottery or rush and gets updated daily. The cheapest Broadway lotteries right now, ranked by price is the fastest route to a thirty-something-dollar seat. And when you win one, eat before the show without blowing your budget.
Watch it on the couch. Then come sit in the room. They are not the same thing, and that is the whole point.
