New Delhi, July 30 -- It was not the weekend anyone scripted. While studios spent months maneuvering around Christopher Nolan's blockbuster, clearing the calendar, delaying competing releases, ceding IMAX screens weeks in advance, nobody anticipated that a 142-minute filmed capture of a Tony-winning stage musical would quietly unseat one of Broadway's most durable box-office records in the same 48-hour window.

The Musical opened at $10.2 million to unseat Hamilton's three-year record as the highest-grossing live Broadway capture ever released theatrically. The numbers arrived at a moment when studio executives have spent the better part of three years debating whether audiences will reliably show up, and for one July weekend, the questio...