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Broadway's 'Spider-Man' Musical Turns Off TheLights At LastJanuary 3, 2014 · 3:26 AM ET

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JEFF LUNDEN

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"Dark" day: On Dec. 20, 2010, actor Christopher Tierney suffered a harrowing fall and severe injuries during a performance ofSpider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. The show updated its safety protocols, and Tierney returned to his roles in April 2011.Jemal Countess/Getty Images

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Reeve Carney (right) handed off the lead role in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark to successor Justin Matthew Sargent inSeptember 2013. The show closes Jan. 4, and the Smithsonian Institution announced today that it's acquiring Carney'scostume.Rob Kim/Getty Images

"Some of the things I described in the stage directions we weren't actually able torender," he says. "And so some of the story points that were perfectly clear in a readingbecame a lot fuzzier when we finally hit the stage."

Gerard, for his part, thinks the reliance on costly, complicated special effects mighthave been one of Spider-Man's first mistakes. "Most of the time when Broadway triesto be the movies, it's a terrible failure," he says.

And as Spider-Man was about to begin previews on Broadway — after a series of long,expensive technical rehearsals — it was clear that some of those effects weren't goingto work at all. Take the million-dollar spiderweb that was supposed to hang over theaudience at the end of the show for a spectacular battle sequence.

"It turned out that the web net, they just couldn't get it to work," Berger recalls. "It justkept catching on things, and so they scrapped it. And suddenly we didn't have anending."

When the show gave its first preview in November 2010, it was plagued by technicaldifficulties. Actors were left dangling above the audience, and the show fast became aTwitter phenomenon. As months of previews went by, Spider-Man turned into thecenter of a media feeding frenzy. Stephen Colbert joked that it might be changing itstitle to Spider-Man: Notify Next of Kin.

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Critics, tired of waiting for the show to invite themedia, bought tickets and gave scathing reviews.Michael Cohl, Spider-Man's lead producer, says hetook some of that criticism to heart and asked JulieTaymor to make significant changes to herdirectorial vision.

"She was absolutely convinced that her vision andher show was going to make it," he says. "We wereconvinced of the opposite, 'cause it had beenplaying for four months."

Long story short: Taymor was sacked, and a newteam was brought in. The show closed for 3 1/2weeks for major revisions, only to reopen to equallyscathing reviews.

"By opening night, I think, the chance of getting anobjective review, you know, had gone out the

window," Glen Berger says.

Still, audiences came. The show ran for more than 1,000 performances, but everyoneagrees that Spider-Man was ultimately done in by impossibly high operating expenses;it cost between $1.2 million and $1.4 million to stage each week. Jeremy Gerard thinksthe loss will be epic.

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"When you factor in the very few streaks in which it took in more in the box office thanit was spending at the box office, when you factor in the lawsuits and the injuries andthe work that had to be done on the theater, I would say it's going to be closer to anentire loss," he says.

Cohl, the producer, has plans to take versions of Spider-Man to Las Vegas, on anarena tour, and to Germany — but no firm plans, at least not at the moment.

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Regardless of how critics and audiences eventually responded, Spider-Man: Turn Offthe Dark was always going to be one of the most-discussed shows in Broadway history.It had songs by U2's Bono and the Edge; it was directed by The Lion King's JulieTaymor; it was based on a hit Marvel franchise; there were going to be flying stuntsright over the audience's heads.

And then somehow it all went very wrong, from injured actors to huge cost overruns.

"Spider-Man will be legendary because of the cost," says Jeremy Gerard, who coveredthe show for Bloomberg News, "and because of the injuries, and because of theridiculous press attention that was paid to it.

"But ultimately," Gerard says bluntly, "it's a bad show."

Now Glen Berger, the show's co-author, has written a juicy tell-all memoir called Songof Spider-Man. He says that way back in 2007, when the show had its first reading forproducers and investors, everyone was convinced Spider-Man was going to be amonster hit. Berger sat next to the actors, reading fantastical stage directions.