SpidermanYep, you read that right. Superhero Hype has the casting notice:

SPIDER-MAN
Theatre
MUSICAL
AEA 29-HOUR REHEARSED READING

Director: Julie Taymor
Music and Lyrics: Bono and The Edge of U2
Musical Supervisor: Teese Gohl
Book: Julie Taymor and Glen Berger
Producer: Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Martin McCallum, Marvel Entertainment
Casting Director: Telsey + Company
Rehearsals: Begin 7/2/07 in NYC
Reading: 7/12/07 and 7/13/07


The notice includes casting calls for Peter Parker, MJ, J. Jonah, and…

[ARACHNE] Female, 20-35 years old, any ethnicity. A beautiful, boastful young woman turned into a spider for her hubris and lack of respect for the gods. She subsequently appears to Peter Parker and the audience as in turn a powerful spider-woman who comes from another time to inspire Peter; an otherworldly lover; a bride; a terrifying (and sexy) dark goddess of vengeance; a dance partner in a charged and violent spiders dance of death; and, finally, a lonely, fragile young woman. Possesses an ethereal, unique, gorgeous singing voice. Strong Celtic, Balkan style, e.g., Sinead O’Connor. Outside the box ideas are welcomed. Could be someone from the music industry.


Okay now, we are very VERY excited by this because Julie Taymor is one of the authentic geniuses of today. Long known for her visionary theater stagings, she actually made THE LION KING Broadway show an amazing post-modern multi-culti experience. TITUS ANDRONICUS was just radical, and her upcoming ACROSS THE UNIVERSE Beatles musical is supposed to be incredible…too incredible for the studio to even release. You can see the trailer here.

Of course, we haven’t even mentioned the idea of Bono and the Edge writing a Spidey musical.

“When a maaaaaaan must climb the towers,
He’s caught in a web, caught in a web…”

We can hear the hit single “When I look in your eyes, MJ” already.

Truly, this marks the beginning of a very special story for The Beat, one we will give our most specialest coverage.

18 COMMENTS

  1. If this becomes a musical (by the time of NY Anime Festival or NYCC 08), I think I want to see this Aracana character. Honestly, A spiderman musical is going to be a massive success or a massive failure. Spiderman is too serious for the modern musical.

  4. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE looks interesting (actually, the last third of the trailer looks interesting, the rest was blah) but I have to wonder, isn’t repurposing Beatles songs for a musical kind of, ya know, cheating? I mean, the music is already proven to have fans, etc., etc., but the songs weren’t written FOR the movie. I had the same problem with Moulin Rouge. It’s like “cinematic karaoke.” It reminds me of all the times I see a trailer for a movie and it uses the music from Nightmare Before Christmas or Requiem For A Dream. Almost anyone could make a movie that would connect with at least some audience if they had access to everyone’s Favorite. Music. In. The. World. Take all the cover songs out of Moulin Rouge and you get a knock off of La Boheme. Will Across The Universe be a good movie if you take all the Beatles songs of it? How can it be the “most original movie” of whenever if not a single song in it is actually original? I’m not saying it won’t be entertaining. I love Wes Anderson’s movies and he does the same thing: take great songs and build a movie around them. And I’ll admit it takes artistry and talent to be able to do that well. Afterall, even with an all-Beatle soundtrack, you could still end up with a stinker of a movie like the Bee Gee’s “Sgt. Pepper” movie.

  6. John Green:

    As you may know, I DETEST Moulin Rouge because it is a FAKE musical. Julie Taymor is everything Baz Dopeman is supposed to be. I see your point about the musical being “non -original” but up until Cole Porter and Rogers and Hammerstein, many stage musicals were little more than revues featuring popular songs of the day.

  8. Absolutely not, Delcoro. Directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly understand song and dance and allow the music to flow in its own timing and rhythm.

    Baz Dopeman reduced all of the songs he licensed to the level of a Sweeney Sisters routine. For two endless hours.

  9. How is one musical that creates a story around a series of pre-existing licensed music fake and another that does the same thing not fake?

    Frankly, the phrase “Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly understand song and dance and allow the music to flow in its own timing and rhythm” does not, in fact, make any sort of sense whatsoever. “Flow in its own timing and rhythm?” What, exactly, does that MEAN?

    Also, Vicente Minelli directed An American In Paris, a Best Picture-winning musical that is “FAKE” by the Beat’s standard.

  10. For what it’s worth: portmanteau name calling like “Baz Dopeman” is indicative of startlingly lazy (not to mention unnecessarily vindictive) thinking, certainly not what I have come to expect from the Beat, the fact notwithstanding that his Tony Nomination for Best Direction of a Musical – for his absolutely startling La Boheme – makes one wonder if statements to the effect that “Baz Luhrmann doesn’t know how to make musicals” are born of ignorance, envy, or both.

  11. Delcoro — who are you, Catherine Martin? Everyone must have something to hate, and what I hate is MOULIN ROUGE for its pointless picking apart of music and rearranging it in little hook medleys, just like an ad for “90s Slammin’est Club Hits.” Luhrmann caters to the ADD generation by cutting songs up into meaningless snippets. What part of “Sweeney Sisters” don’t you understand?

    I’m amused to see American Idol and the ghastly Dancing with the Stars somewhat reintroducing the idea of classical musical traditions (corny as they may be) to large audiences. I think this kind of storytelling has long been missing, and people were subconsciously hungry for it.

    So there.

  13. Heidi – maybe you should check out this week’s LA Weekly for Nikki Finke’s real scoop on Julie Taylor overbloated 2 and a half hour cut of Across the Universe which SONY REFUSES TO RELEASE.

    Test screenings have not been favorable – and Julie’s getting a little nasty about Eric Roth’s proposed one hour and forty-five minute cut.

    ~

    Coat

  15. Hmmm… La Boheme or Rent? West Side Story or Romeo and Juliet? Is “One Froggy Evening” less a masterpiece because it re-uses “Hello My Baby”?

    Myself, I prefer something with memorable songs, great staging, and preferably decent acting. If the musical re-uses popular music, then the book better be good. If it re-uses music I’ve never heard before (like Singing In The Rain) then even better. (I suffer from Stalling’s Syndrome because I watched too many MGM and Warner Brothers cartoons as an adolescent. Now I create soundtracks subconsciously while I walk down the street. Today it was “Sunny Side of the Street”. Much of the popular music in my head comes from those cartoon music videos.)

    Some performers can cover a great song and make it memorable. (Just ask Liza Minelli about “New York New York.) Others can take a song and make you either laugh out loud or cry silently. (Golden Throats) The same goes for musicals.

    And Heidi, not everything Gene Kelly did was great. Yes, he was a master perfectionist and made dancing athletic (while Fred Astaire made it look gracefful). But if it wasn’t for him dancing on roller skates, I would never have watched It’s Always Fair Weather.

    And here’s the source for those April fools…
    http://www.playbill.com/news/article/107378.html

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