I am so bored of the Spiderman crap. The cynic in me believes this has been planned for weeks and that it was drawn out like this (announcing that there would be an announcement, and then endlessly leaking information) so they could get as much publicity as they could, because, let's face it, sales were dropping every week, publicity had dwindled because people were so tired of hearing about it, and this was the perfect way to jack up interest again. Now they'll shut down and do work they should have done long ago - but the people doing the work are, how shall we say, not exactly theater magicians or theater people who have been around the boards a lot - which is really who they need. The new director has directed exactly one Broadway show, and that wasn't especially memorable save for its leading man - The Boy from Oz. The new book writer wrote some Spiderman comics and did a reworked book that apparently didn't solve much for It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman, which had its one and only production thus far in Dallas. If they had true theater pros who were experts, three weeks of work would not be an impossible dream, but one has to believe that with this team and being tied to a physical production that cannot change that much (especially the flying sequences, which I can guarantee you will not change) not that much will happen. These producers, I must say, make me nauseous. They don't care how much money they spend or what kind of awful precedents they set. This little 65 million dollar musical will now suddenly have a budget of 80 million dollars and, presuming they do make it palatable to critics (doubtful, but who knows) and audiences, they would still have to run at capacity and full price ticket sales for over eight years to even begin to break even - and if they're not selling out it will take twelve years.
