Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway — Rise, Injuries, and Fall
Exhibit A: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway – Subject Overview
The show opened on Broadway in the summer of 2011 as the most expensive production the industry had ever staged, and its reputation only grew stranger once the curtain finally came down. More than a decade later, it still surfaces online under a scattershot of names: Spider Man Broadway, Spider Man on Broadway, Spiderman on Broadway, Spiderman Broadway Show, Broadway Spiderman, none of which match the hyphenated, colon-heavy title it actually opened under.
Trade coverage and message-board threads alike still shorthand it as Spider Man Broadway whenever the full punctuated title is inconvenient to type, and old detractors still invoke Broadway Spiderman as shorthand for a rock-opera adaptation gone sideways.
Subject: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was a rock musical with music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, and a book by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. The musical had been in development since the early 2000s, long before any of them ever saw it reach a stage.
The production remains the most expensive in Broadway history, with a final budget estimated at $75,000,000. It officially opened on June 14, 2011, at the Foxwoods Theatre after a record-breaking 182 preview performances, a stretch so long that regular theatergoers joked they'd seen three different versions of the same show.
The preview period was marked by technical failures and high-profile performer injuries, along with a widely reported creative-direction change partway through. That's not a rounding error; it's a fundamental miscalculation of what a preview period is supposed to accomplish. Despite strong commercial interest in its early runs, the show closed on January 4, 2014.
If you saw it during previews, you saw a different show than the one that opened that June, rewritten while you and everyone else were still buying tickets.
It didn't work as planned.
Metadata Scan
Exhibit B: A Troubled Broadway Timeline
More than four years passed between Bono and The Edge's confirmed involvement in January 2007 and the show's official opening in June 2011, filled with delays, rising costs, and a mid-preview creative overhaul that removed the show's original director. The timeline below marks the moments that mattered most, from the project's earliest days to its final Broadway performance. Search suggestions for Spider Man on Broadway still autocomplete into the same handful of facts covered here: the delays, the injuries, the budget, and the closing night itself.
Exhibit C: Where the Original Cast Landed Next
Broadway shows close, but careers keep going, and this one sent several of its original cast toward some of the most recognizable work of the next decade. A fullercast dossier, including principals not pictured here, is filed separately.
Went on to lead roles including Netflix's The Sandman, where he played Dream; he stayed with the production for its entire original run, an unusually long commitment for a Broadway lead.
Later joined the Broadway run of American Psycho, and had already logged real Broadway mileage before this show, having been instrumental in its early workshops well before opening night.
Earned later acclaim as Hades in Hadestown, having already built a reputation for playing larger-than-life Broadway villains before signing on as Norman Osborn; his presence gave the production some rare continuity through the director change.
The phrase Spiderman Broadway Show still turns up in Reddit threads and Broadway-trivia quizzes decades later, usually attached to the budget number rather than any tune from the score.
Analysis: The Taymor Vision
Director Julie Taymor implemented a highly stylized, mask-driven aesthetic she had spent decades developing across film and theater before ever taking on a comic-book property. It's worth pausing on how unusual the pairing behind this show actually was: an avant-garde director known for elaborate puppetry, working alongside two rock musicians who had never written a full stage score, adapting a character created decades earlier for an entirely different medium. The vision integrated complex aerial choreography that pushed against existing theater safety standards of the time, and critics would spend years arguing over whether that ambition was ever really compatible with eight shows a week.
Staging a production this size meant leaning on New York's theater and finance networks in equal measure. The show's producers and financiers worked out of the same city where many New York sportsbooks are licensed today, one more example of how much large-scale commercial activity still clusters in Manhattan.
Analysis: The Score
The Bono/Edge score for the show fused U2's arena-rock sensibility with Broadway's structural demands, the product of a songwriting process that stretched across years of delays and rewrites long before opening night. It was Bono and The Edge's first attempt at writing a full stage musical rather than another studio album, and the adjustment showed: songs built for an arena don't automatically work when a cast has to sing them eight times a week while suspended above an audience.
The full Bono and The Edge score file covers how the song reached the Billboard Hot 100 and what became of the cast album.
Interest in Spiderman on Broadway has outlasted plenty of Broadway productions that actually turned a profit, which says something about how memorable disaster can be more durable than mere competence.
You don't need to have heard a single bar of the score to know the number that mattered more: seventy-five million dollars, spent before the show ever recouped a cent.
INTERROGATION: FAQ
Why did Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark close on Broadway?
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark closed on January 4, 2014, after 1,066 regular performances. Ticket demand had cooled once the show's early novelty wore off, and continuing to run a production this expensive at anything less than full houses stopped making commercial sense.
How many people were injured during the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark previews?
The production's aerial rigging led to several widely reported injuries during its record 182-performance preview period, the most serious involving a stunt performer's fall that required hospitalization. The incidents prompted safety reviews before the show's official opening in June 2011.
How much did Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark cost to produce?
With a final budget estimated at $75 million, the production remains the most expensive in Broadway history, a distinction driven mainly by its aerial rigging, custom theater modifications, and an unusually long preview period spent reworking scenes in front of paying audiences.
Why did Bono and The Edge write the music for Spider-Man on Broadway?
Bono and The Edge signed on to score Spider-Man on Broadway years before it opened, drawn to the challenge of writing a full stage musical rather than another studio album. It was their first attempt at a complete Broadway score, and the songwriting process stretched across the production's long, delayed development.