New ‘Song of Spider-Man’ Book Exposes All The Grisly Details About ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’

The many troubles of the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have been fairly well chronicled in news reports over the past three years or so (including a few on this very website), but according new tell-all book by Glen Berger, we barely know the half of it.

Among the revelations in Song of Spider-Man is the news that executives at Marvel Entertainment flat-out thought the show would damage the Spider-Man brand. They called the initial script treatment "entirely wrong" and "quite dark," and wanted original director Julie Taymor, who was fired from the show in 2011, to cut out Arachne, a villain created specifically for the musical.

Berger himself is a playwright who collaborated with Taymor on the show's script. The New York Times explains his take on Bono, who co-wrote the music for Turn Off the Dark with U2 bandmate Edge:

Bono is by turns absent and anxious, conspiring against Ms. Taymor in e-mail and late-night meetings, but then lamenting that a script rewrite after her dismissal “sounds like it’s out of ‘The Waltons.’ ”

For now, you can read the full NYT report on the book, but you'll have to wait until November 5 to get your hands on the full text of Song of Spider-Man.