BROADWAY: Is Spider-Man Musical Dead?

The abysmal reviews for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark were the final nail in its coffin, sources say. The long-troubled musical “is dead,” says one. The money is running out, tickets are going unsold, and Michael Riedel predicts it will stagger on for a few more months, but should be entirely dead by September—unless, of course, someone actually gets killed, in which case “Spider-Man could run longer than Cats,” he writes in the New York Post.

He blames the musical’s downfall entirely on Julie Taymor, “a self-absorbed spendthrift” who “was allowed to run wild with the budget, the special effects, and all of her pretentious nonsense about Greek mythology and Peter Parker’s search for identity.” She couldn’t get the show right during 15 weeks of rehearsals and three months of previews, and through it all not a single person challenged her. Even Bono, who co-wrote the music, knew the show was a mess and washed his hands of it, sources say.