The Lights Are Turned Out on the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Musical

?AH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. From New York magazine:

Last week, Michael Riedel reported that work on next year’s Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark had been put on “hiatus” after producers ran out of money. Now, in today’s Post,
he says the actors are being released from their contracts, which
certainly doesn’t bode well for the show’s planned opening next
February.

This is reportedly the fault of the show’s producers,
Sony, Marvel, and David Garfinkle, a Chicago lawyer with practically no
Broadway experience who’s been unable to rein in Julie Taymor’s
expensive impulses and watched the budget swell to a hilarious $45
million. Riedel says a move to replace Garfinkle last week was
unsuccessful because more experienced producers know better than to
sign up for a probable disaster. Also, speaking with a math-capable
source, Riedel says Spider-Man would have to play sold-out shows for five years just to break even.

Wait a second. You’re telling me that this musical, which featured U2 at its most pretentious (seriously, “Turn Off the Dark”?) and a brand-new villain called the Swiss Miss (I’m not shitting you) has some kind of unrealistic expectations about its potential success? I can’t imagine. Look, I’m not opposed to a Spider-Man Broadway musical, but this whole thing has seemed ludicrously pretentious since day one, which is not the adjective you want when making a musical about a comic book character. The fact that it ran out of money well before the damn thing even started would seem to back this up.