As Blaxx said, it's easy to name examples of POPULAR Broadway shows that managed to come out unscathed after releasing a video. Not so easy to name cases where the show in question had yet to prove themselves in the market, and hasn't even received strong word of mouth.
You have Off-Broadway shows that were filmed, but most of those are limited runs in small houses, and their audience is mostly New Yorkers, who don't have as much to lose by seeing a show live even if it's already filmed. By contrast, a Broadway show like Diana has a larger house, an open run, more expensive tickets, and needs to appeal to a tourist market, who are less likely to see a show if it's playing on Netflix, especially if it's already an unpopular show.
NTLive is also a bad comparison for a number of reasons:
(1) similar to Off-broadway, NTL tends to film limited-run shows. So again, it's not as hard to keep demand high. And with the less popular shows, once again, the audiences for these are usually locals (see my paragraph above).
(2) When they do happen to film a show that later transfers to an open commercial run, it's often a show that has gained enough popularity that it can attract audiences regardless of having been filmed. Especially if it's a spectacle-driven show like War Horse, which benefits from a live viewing.
(3) There's a big difference between screening a show in cinemas for a few weeks, and making it available on Netflix. The cinema tickets cost $15-$25 dollars, with screenings on scattered dates and times, during a short window of time, only in art-house theatres, only in some cities. That's HUGELY different from dropping it permanently on one of the most popular home streaming services, for no additional cost.
Even just the fact that it's Netflix, and not BroadwayHD (or some other streaming avenue) makes a huge difference. The average tourist is unlikely to be aware that services like BroadwayHD, DigitalTheatre, etc. even exist, let alone what their library contains. Netflix is massive, and virtually ubiquitous. I think the combination of "highly-publicized streaming" and "otherwise unpopular show" will be a deadly one.
I'm no expert at predicting box office results. In fact, I'm generally very bad at predicting what will sell and what won't. But for the reasons I stated above, I think streaming Diana on Netflix is not a good idea, and not comparable to other examples of shows being filmed while still running.
Updated On: 8/12/20 at 05:29 PM