Great news, potential Spider-Man: the Musical fans! The budget for the Julie Taymor–directed, Bono-scored show has ballooned to $40 million, making it “the most expensive production in theater history,” according to Post theater columnist (and avowed hip-hop fan) Michael Riedel. (By the way, we’re going to ignore the fact that Riedel credits Bon Jovi with the score — we, too, often confuse entire bands from New Jersey with the singer of U2.) The show, scheduled to open on Broadway next year, has apparently spent freely, cutting no corners in assembling a top-notch design team: “There’s a set designer and a costume designer and a projections designer and a fight designer and an aerial designer and a graphic designer and a film designer.”
We know what you’re thinking — sounds kind of unwieldy, right? Wrong! How much money did you cheapskates think it was going to cost to make a Spider-Man musical?! A project of this scale clearly needed to spend more money than anything, ever. And now that it looks like that will happen, we can all breathe a bit easier.
Taymor’s Web of Riches [NYP]
