Tag: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (1-10 of 47)

Apr 22 2013 05:29 PM ET

Broadway box office: 'Matilda' joins 'Motown' and 'Lucky Guy' as a new hit

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

Matilda has emerged as a Dahled-up hit of the new Broadway season. In its first full week since its April 11 opening, the rapturously reviewed musical earned $1.13 million for the week ending April 21, according to figures from the Broadway League. That’s a 51 percent increase in ticket sales from the previous week, and represents nearly 89 percent of the potential gross from the Shubert Theatre.

Matilda is one of four brand-new shows that joined this week’s Million Dollar Club of high earners on the Great White Way. The Tom Hanks-topped drama Lucky Guy raked in $1.41 million, fully 124 percent of its potential earnings due to premium-priced ticket sales; Motown the Musical pulled down $1.15 million, 81 percent of its maximum; and the Cyndi Lauper musical Kinky Boots kicked up $1.06 million, about 73 percent of its potential high.

Rounding out this week’s Million Dollar Club are four long-running mainstays: The Lion King ($1.84 million); Wicked ($1.81 million); The Book of Mormon ($1.67 million); and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark ($1.06 million).

Five more shows are slated to open this week, including a high-profile (and high-flying) revival of the musical Pippin, which last week earned $683,911 (a strong 74 percent of its potential gross).  And there are early indications of box office staying power for Bette Midler’s one-woman play I’ll Eat You Last, which broke a new record last week for the relatively small Booth Theatre with $686,031 in sales. What’s even more impressive is that the Divine Miss M is playing just seven performances a week (most Broadway shows do eight).

Some other star-driven nonmusical newbies — including The Nance with Nathan Lane, Orphans with Alec Baldwin, Macbeth with Alan Cumming, and The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson and Cuba Gooding Jr. — have yet to spark much box office heat. Each show may have to hope for a strong critical embrace (several have only just opened or will be debuting in coming days) and the even stronger embrace of the Tony nominating committee (which announces its picks on April 30).

Follow Thom on Twitter: @ThomGeier

Read More on EW.com:
This Week on Stage: Alec Baldwin, Nathan Lane, The Rascals, and a slew of new openings
See Opening Night Video for The Nance
Listen to three tracks from Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
EW Stage hub

Apr 10 2013 11:31 AM ET

Julie Taymor settles 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' litigation

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Image Credit: Jacob Cohl

The very long, very involved legal battle between Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark creative teams past and present finally has been resolved: Julie Taymor, Glen Berger, and 8 Legged Productions LLC have settled all their pending claims against each other, they announced today.

“We’re happy to put all this behind us,” 8 Legged’s Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris said in a statement. “We are now looking forward to spreading Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark in new and exciting ways around the world.”

According to the statement, “The parties’ settlement agreement resolves Ms. Taymor’s claims against 8 Legged in connection with her work on the book of the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, with respect to both the current New York production and subsequent productions.” READ FULL STORY »

Jan 28 2013 03:23 PM ET

Broadway box office: Scarlett Johansson sells tickets -- but Jessica Chastain has star power, too, post-Globes

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

January is typically a slow period on Broadway, given the seasonal dip in post-holiday tourism, but shows headlined by Hollywood starlets are bucking the trend this year. In its first full week since its Jan. 17 opening, the Scarlett Johansson-led revival Cat on a Hot Tin Roof clawed in $886,531 for the week ending Jan. 27, according to the Broadway League. That’s a modest 5 percent dip from the show’s premiere week and represents a strong 67 percent of the potential gross for the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Since reviews for Rob Ashford’s production were generally mixed, the popularity of the 28-year-old Avengers star (and improbable doppelganger for a young Christopher Walken) will be a big factor in the revival’s fortunes during its limited run through March 30.

Meanwhile, the recent Golden Globe win for Zero Dark Thirty star Jessica Chastain has proven to be a sudden box office bonanza for the actress’ Broadway debut, The Heiress. The drama revival, which opened last November and will end its limited run Feb. 9, grossed $604,765 last week, a nearly 36 percent jump from its total two weeks ago and two-thirds of the potential haul for the venue. (Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that her costar Dan Stevens is back in the public eye with the return of Downton Abbey on PBS.) READ FULL STORY »

Nov 26 2012 04:30 PM ET

Broadway box office: Christmas comes early as 12 shows top $1 million

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

For Broadway producers, Thanksgiving brought some extra trimmings this year. According to figures from the Broadway League, a dozen Broadway shows topped $1 million at the box office for the week ending Nov. 25 — the first time that’s happened all year. Perennial musical hits led the list: Wicked ($2.3 million), The Lion King ($2.1 million), The Book of Mormon ($1.8 million), and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark ($1.78 million). The fifth slot went to the just-opened revival Annie (pictured above), which took a stroll down Easy Street by selling $1.5 million in tickets, 105 percent of the show’s potential gross and a house record for the Palace Theatre. (Premium ticket charges spiked the average ticket price to $116, from $89 the week before.) READ FULL STORY »

Aug 4 2012 09:43 AM ET

This Week on Stage: 'Bring It On' waves its spirit stick on Broadway

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

A high-flying, basket-tossing new musical based on the 2000 teen cheerleader comedy Bring It On took an unusual (backward-somersaulting) path to its Broadway opening this week. Instead of launching a national tour after a splashy New York run, the energetic tuner (which is only loosely based on the Kirsten Dunst film, plot-wise) played in 13 cities starting last November before bowing on the Great White Way. In my B+ review, I noted the youthful cast and a score, by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights), with lyrics by Miranda and Amanda Green (High Fidelity), that actually “sounds like it was composed in this century.”

Also on Broadway, it’s the final curtain this weekend for three shows: Fela!, a short-run musical revival that has been doing anemic box office; Harvey, the comedy revival ending its limited summer run so star Jim Parsons can return to L.A. to shoot The Big Bang Theory; and Memphis, the 2010 Tony-winning musical that is expected to recoup its $12 million investment this weekend after 30 previews and 1,166 performances over the course of nearly three years. (At that rate, imagine how long it might take Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark to break even.) READ FULL STORY »

Jun 4 2012 09:00 AM ET

Tony Awards 2012: We predict the winners

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Image Credit: Deen van Meer

Now is the time for Newsies fans and theater geeks everywhere to seize the day! It’s Tony time! This Sunday, Neil Patrick Harris will be donning his tux once again to host the annual celebration of Broadway’s finest moments (and we’ll be live-blogging the Tony Award ceremony, so please watch with us!). In a repeat from last year’s NPH-led event, expect another rash of jokes at the expense of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Fellow EW critic Melissa Rose Bernardo and I here offer our predictions in all the Tony categories (you’ll see our names after each of our picks). Disagree? Please let us know who you think will win — or should win — in the comments section. (For more Stage coverage, go to EW.com’s Stage hub.)

Best Play
Clybourne Park (Thom)
Other Desert Cities (Melissa)
Peter and the Starcatcher
Venus in Fur

It’s one of the strongest years in recent memory for new American plays. While Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities won wide acclaim when it opened last year, I give the edge to Pulitzer winner Clybourne Park.

Best Musical
Leap of Faith
Newsies (Melissa, Thom)
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Once

This is a two-way race between movie-based hits that each have an underdog story: Once and Newsies. The former is charming but relatively small-scale. And since a sizable number of Tony voters handle Broadway tours throughout the country, a more traditional, broader-based hit like Newsies is likely to win out. READ FULL STORY »

May 9 2012 01:50 PM ET

‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ to offer free tickets to people named Tony on Tony Awards Sunday

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Image Credit: Jacob Cohl

Here’s something you’ve never heard before: The producers of Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark have decided to offer free tickets to a performance on June 10 (the same day as the Tony Awards) to anyone with the first name Anthony, Tony, Antoinette, Toni or Antonio. The reason? So that when Tony Sunday rolls around, Spider-Man will technically have “more Tonys than any other show on Broadway on Sunday, June 10,” said producers Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris in a joint statement. READ FULL STORY »

Mar 10 2012 06:05 PM ET

This Week on Stage: Julie Taymor vs. Bono, a capella in New York

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

Julie Taymor’s back, she’s saved her emails, and she’s not afraid to use them. News broke this week that the fired Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark director filed new documents—which include private emails and recorded conversations—in her $1 million lawsuit against the show’s producers. Let’s just say the papers don’t portray Spider-Man’s composers Bono and the Edge as Broadway’s best collaborators.

Meanwhile, out in Los Angeles, half the town was holding a court of their own at the star-studded (think George Clooney and Brad Pitt) reading of Dustin Lance Black’s 8, which chronicles the federal trial over same-sex marriage in California. And in non-law-related theater news, Universal Pictures Stage Productions announced that they were adapting the cult film Animal House for the Main Stem. (Doubters, before you say “ugh,” remember that the Greeks did invent drama.)

Our writers also reviewed five new off-Broadway shows. Writer Stephan Lee awarded Nina Raine’s Tribes an A- for the “incisive writing and superb acting” in the family drama about a deaf man’s struggle to discover himself among his hearing relatives. “There isn’t a weak performance in the bunch,” he said about the cast.

The off-Broadway revival of Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque earned an A- from correspondent Keith Staskiewicz, who called it “two hours of intentional discomfort spewed out of some dark and recondite corner of Albee’s mind, adorned in grim irony,” adding that “the production is also absolutely riveting, which is the right word because it indeed feels like someone has affixed your body to your chair.”

I gave the off-Broadway a cappella show Voca People a C- for trying to cram over 70 songs and a thin sci-fi plot into 90 minutes, writing that “someone appears to be laboring under the misapprehension that more songs and more variety will appeal to more people (and more tourists).”

An Iliad “can occasionally be a bit of a slog” admitted stage editor Thom Geier about Denis O’Hare and Stephen Spinella’s one-man readings of Homer’s war epic (the actors alternate performances), but he found it notable “as a showcase for the acting skills of two accomplished stage veterans.” He graded the production a B-.

The revival of Tina Howe’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning Painting Churches also scored a B-. Critic Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote that the “esteemed portrait of an artist and her aging parents is as relevant today as it was when the award-winning play premiered,” but felt the drama’s dialogue (who still says “at sixes and sevens”?) showed its age.

For more stage news and reviews, check out EW.com’s Stage hub.

Mar 5 2012 12:33 PM ET

Julie Taymor takes aim at Bono in 'Spider-Man' lawsuit

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

At Broadway’s Foxwoods Theatre, Spider-Man takes on the Green Goblin in a gravity-defying battle over Manhattan eight times every week. But that’s nothing compared to the fight that’s still unfolding off-stage between the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and ex-director Julie Taymor. Yesterday, Taymor filed new documents in her $1 million lawsuit — in which she claims she’s owed royalties for the show despite being fired last March — revealing private emails that paint composers Bono and the Edge, co-writer Glen Berger, and other collaborators in a harshly negative light. READ FULL STORY »

Feb 16 2012 04:43 PM ET

'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' producers reach settlement with Julie Taymor's directors' union

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Image Credit: Joan Marcus

8 Legged Productions LLC, the producers of the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has reached a settlement with the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), the union representing the show’s creator Julie Taymor.

According to a press release sent to EW by Spider-Man production spokesperson Rick Miramontez, the producers of the show have agreed to pay Taymor full royalties for her services as director and, once the show recoups, as a collaborator. They also withdrew litigation in which the producers challenged the SDC’s jurisdiction and the SDC arbitrated against the producers.

However, this settlement is strictly between the producers and the directors’ union, not Taymor herself; the lawsuits between Taymor and Spider-Man’s producers regarding authorship are still ongoing.

Taymor filed a suit against the producers in November after being fired from the production, alleging that she had not been properly compensated for her work on the musical and that her ousting violated her creative rights. In January, the show’s producers fired back with a countersuit that accused Taymor of failing to fulfill her contractual obligations when she refused to work with collaborators to improve Spider-Man after the show’s much-admonished debut in previews.

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