U2 Bringing Spider-man to Broadway

Music Juice writes "A Broadway musical based on the web-slinging superhero is in the works, Marvel Studios said Friday. It will be directed by Tony winner Julie Taymor with new music and lyrics by U2 frontman Bono and guitarist The Edge. The musical will be the first time a Marvel Comics character has been the subject of a show on Broadway, the company said. No opening date was announced, but Marvel said a reading would take place this summer. "

$10 says they make his infection an AIDS metaphor

[elrous0]

Come on, the Peter Parker story is an interesting one by comic book and action film standards. But is it really the kind of thing which will translate well to the stage? Spiderman flying around on a harness like Peter Pan is going to HAVE to be campy. How on earth would you play that seriously? A lot of the "cheats" of the film (special FX, CGI, explosions) are not going to be available and the Peter Parker story can only carry you so far.

Though, admittedly, this is a place where a play with actors dressed as cats ran for decades.

Might be worth it...

[dominique_cimafranca]

...just to hear Bono's rendition of the Spider-Man theme song. "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can...." Acrobatics aside, the Spider-Man story does have very operatic themes: ambition, death of a parental figure, revenge, and of course, responsibility. So who knows? For the record, Superman was produced as a Broadway musical in 1966, though it only had a very short run. More on Wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Success of epic musicals

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually seen [www.cbc.ca] the LOTR musical? I saw it the first week it opened in Toronto, and actually liked it! Critics are critics because they think they are intelligent enough that they can pick apart something. I was entertained, I felt it was well worth the money for the trip and I was very impressed with the show. Tear it apart all you want, but you just proved to me that all you did was just read a few news snippets and drew uninformed conclusions...