Spider-Man movie and musical delayed

It all started with One More Day, if you ask me.

The big Spider-Man event of 2007 was supposed to come out in August on a weekly schedule, but problems behind the scenes delayed the series so much that the final installment came out in the last week of the year. (And boyoboy, aren’t we glad Marvel waited to deliver us that story?)

Now it seems that every other Spider property is being delayed because of problems behind the scenes.

First, Alan Cumming mentioned on Saturday that the upcoming Broadway musical “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark”
in which he is set to star as the Green Goblin, would be significantly
delayed and that producers had hit “an iceberg of
financial ruin” last year and couldn’t raise enough money
for the show, which is expected to cost upwards of $50 million. He said
the producers should have taken down posters in the theater district
that suggest the show is opening soon; the musical’s web site still says that previews start February 25 and that tickets are on sale.

Then Nikki Finke broke the story that Spider-Man 4 has been shelved and that director Sam Raimi and the entire cast are gone– apparently because Raimi felt he couldn’t make the Summer 2011 release date and keep the film’s creative integrity. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced that they are moving
forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt “that focuses
on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and
amazing super-human crises” for a Summer 2012 release date. Rumors and speculations abound that they’ll shoot the movie in 3D and even try to get James Cameron involved again.

I suspect we’re going to see more and more of these types of delays as the financial stakes get higher and higher and things appear more and more in the public eye.

(Artwork by Joey Mason.)