Revisiting Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark

Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark is breaking box office records.

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  • USA Today
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Back in December 2010, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the über-hyped Broadway musical based on the Marvel comic book, directed by Julie Taymor, featuring songs from U2’s Bono and the Edge, was a punch-line for late night comics.

Early reviews were ferocious in tone, and abundant with loathing.

The future of the snake-bit production was anything but certain.

Producers made some major tweaks to the show, including parting ways with Taymor, before officially (finally) opening in June 2011.

Over a year later, the show is setting box office records:

’‘“Has there been a bigger, more spectacular Broadway failure in recent memory than Spider-Man, the musical?
Before you answer, hear this: It just broke a record for highest revenue from ticket sales in a single week. The 75-million dollar butt of brutal and nightly jokes on Letterman — not to mention bad reviews and injuries to cast members. Turned its Spidey-sense into box office gold.

The story concludes with a sobering look at the over-all numbers: “Still, Spiderman would have to have about five years of record weeks to make up its costs. But the story of redemption may be priceless.”

While the Spider-Man producers appear to have dodged the catastrophic iceberg that once seemed destined to sink their Titanic, last year’s the original post was also skeptical about some of 2011’s other comic book adaptations.

Let’s see how we fared, with apologies to the Car Talk’s “Stump the Chumps”:’’