NEW YORK: One of the lead producers of Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” says moving the show to Las Vegas makes sense because Sin City has always been a better fit for the splashy musical than the Great White Way.
“We can have a more exciting and better show in Las Vegas. To me, Las Vegas is the town of show business,” Michael Cohl said Tuesday, a day after announcing the Broadway version would close in January. “If you look at our show, it’s much, much more a spectacle and a Vegas show than a Broadway show. So I think we’re going to have a great time there.”
Cohl said he and producer Jeremiah J. Harris decided to pull the plug on the New York version after the show — among Broadway’s biggest earners for years — sprung a leak this summer and never recovered. It last broke the $1 million mark in mid-August and has limped through a dismal fall. Producers had said it needed to make $1.2 million a week just to break even.
“It’s no secret that September and October were not a lot of fun. It was screaming at us: ‘The time has come.’ And so there it is. It’s come,” Cohl said.
“We expect to have a good run through the rest of the year, and the last couple of weeks of December we expect to be fantastic because they have been the last years.”
Last week, the show took in just $742,595, less than half its $1,543,508 potential despite a Foxwoods Theatre that was three-quarters full. The musical, with songs by U2’s Bono and The Edge, is now routinely discounting tickets.
“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” — Broadway’s most expensive show, with a price tag of $75 million — had a rocky start, with six delays in its opening night, injuries to several actors, a shake-up that led to the firing of original director Julie Taymor and critical drubbing.
The show began previews in late 2010 but didn’t officially open until mid-June 2011, long after many critics had already tired of the delays and written crushing reviews. Some 2 million people have seen it and it will have played 1,268 performances when it closes on Jan. 4.
