Spider-Man: The Musical!
If while flipping through the pages of a Spider-Man comic book or watching a DVD of one of the wildly successful movie adaptations starring the character, you've ever found yourself saying, "You know what? This superhero stuff would be pretty good if there were some singing and dancing involved. These people are really leaving a lot of money on the table by not putting this on Broadway," today is truly a happy day. Marvel Comics has revealed plans for Spider-Man: The Musical, which will be directed by The Lion King's Julie Taymor, and, in a true masterstroke of surreality, feature original music by Bono and The Edge. In its story on the big announcement, the LAT notes some of the the technical challenges Taymor will face on the seemingly insane quest she's about to undertake:
Spider-Man has some of the most visually interesting villains in all of comics, and it will be a challenge for Taymor to deliver a viable stage adaptation of the mechanical tentacles of Doctor Octopus or the flying bat-glider of the Green Goblin. But the director did win Tonys for direction and costume design for the wildly popular adaptation of "The Lion King," which used puppetry, stilts, mechanically enhanced costumes and other tactics to create its complex vision of the jungle fable.
We imagine that no expense will be spared in helping Taymore realize her vision for the project (whatever that may be), and eventually we'll all be clamoring for tickets to watch superhero movie veteran and Broadway staple Hugh Jackman swinging to and fro on an elaborate system of pulleys created especially for the production, belting out Bono's musical interpretation of Peter Parker's trademark one-liners, and battling villains in exquisitely bedazzled spandex. And if the following video of some early, computer-modeled choreography is to be trusted, the dancing will be just as spectacular as its other inevitably top-notch elements: