Will the most expensive Broadway musical of all time even hit the stage? Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the $54 million Julie Taymor-Bono collaboration has suffered another set back, with Tony winner Alan Cumming dropping out to star on the TV drama The Good Wife instead (ouch!). “It’s like a lover who dumped you and wants you back,” the former Nightcrawler told MTV News about Spidey’s multiple delays. “You’re a little scared to go back in case they dump you again.” Cumming and Evan Rachel Wood, who left the cast last month, were first announced to play the Green Goblin and Mary-Jane Watson respectively in June 2009 with a February 2010 start date, one that’s obviously passed. Unknown Reeve Carney is reportedly still set to play the titular hero when the musical finally launches later this year.
Or rather, if it finally launches. The expensive project has struggled to keep financial backers since the project’s first reading in 2007, with Cumming himself once calling it “an iceberg of financial ruin.” Even if the doors do open, there’s still the matter of the peculiar plot, which finds Spidey tussling with Arachne, “a beautiful, boastful young woman turned into a spider for her hubris and lack of respect for the gods” (oddly, Larry King‘s estranged wife Shawn was reportedly a finalist for the part). Hmm, a Spider-Man musical that has to survive for years to make a profit involves magical vixens and music by Bono. Is anyone still excited for this thing?
[Photos: Getty Images]
