Featuring music by Bono and The Edge of U2 and directed by Julie Taymor of Across the Universe fame, nothing could possibly go wrong.
Remember that scene from Spider-Man 3 where Peter Parker jumped up on top of the bar, tap danced his way across a set of tables, punched Mary Jane in the face and snapped his fingers to say, “Now dig on this?” Of course not, because there never was a Spider-Man 3 and I just made that entire thing up! But had there been a Spider-Man 3 and such a scene just so happened to take place, not only would it have been one of the most traumatic moments in cinema history, but it would have been just a small glimpse of what it may be like to witness a Spider-Man musical.
Opening at Broadway’s Hilton Theatre on February 18, 2010, “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark” combines the creative talents of U2’s Bono and The Edge, along with director Julie Taymor whose previous work includes the Broadway adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King and the Beatles-inspired musical, Across the Universe. Bono and Edge will be creating new songs and lyrics for the show and are no strangers to comic book adaptations, having created the only good thing to come out of the 90’s Batman flicks, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” for the Batman Forever soundtrack.
Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark, will be a musical origin story for Peter Parker, taking the young hero from his modest upbringing in Queens to the world of the Daily Bugle and the rest of Manhattan, all thanks to his encounter with a radioactive spider. Somewhere along the way we’ll all learn that with great power comes great responsibility and that the new status quo is the best status quo. Wait, what?
