Broadway’s ‘Spider-Man’ Announces Summer Return; Adds To Its Creative Team, Loses Julie Taymor

“Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark” has a newly expanded creative team in place.

The team will be implementing a new plan to make significant and exciting revisions to the production, lead producers Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris announced on Wednesday.

Opening night (previously set for March 15, 2011) has been rescheduled to an evening in early summer, 2011.

This amended schedule will allow the time necessary to execute the plan, which will include revisions to the script. The additional time commitment required by this new plan will make it impossible for director and co-book writer Julie Taymor to continue on in her day-to-day duties with the production.

Philip William McKinley and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa have joined the creative team to help implement new staging and book rewrites, respectively.

McKinley has vast experience directing technically complex productions on Broadway and beyond. Aguirre-Sacasa is both an acclaimed playwright and a noted writer of Spider-Man comic books.

“Julie Taymor is not leaving the creative team. Her vision has been at the heart of this production since its inception and will continue to be so,” producers Cohl and Harris said in statement released to Access on Wednesday. “Julie’s previous commitments mean that past March 15, she cannot work the 24/7 necessary to make the changes in the production in order to be ready for our opening. We cannot exaggerate how technically difficult it is to make such changes to a show of this complexity, so it’s with great pride that we announce that Phil McKinley is joining the creative team. Phil is hugely experienced with productions of this scale and is exactly what ‘Spider-Man Turn off the Dark needs right now.”

U2’s Bono and The Edge – who wrote the music for the show, and are now working on new tunes — added, “Julie is a truly gifted and imaginative director. This is an epic ride, and the standing ovations we have seen from the preview audiences have confirmed our absolute faith in the project. We are listening and learning and, as a result, we have a couple of new songs we are very very excited about putting into the mix. All of us on the creative team are committed to taking ‘Spider-Man’ to the next level. We are confident it will reach its full potential and when it does, it will open.”

Copyright © 2024 by NBC Universal, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This material may not be republished, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Read More

Karol G's Private Jet Makes Emergency Landing Amid Smoke In The Cockpit (Report)