Troubled Production/Real Life/Theatre

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Troubled Productions in Real Life Theatre include:

  • Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, The Musical take on the comic book, had a hard time just getting to its preview period on Broadway...whereupon It Got Worse due to seemingly endless injuries to its performers, inspiring parodies on Conan, snarky coverage by The Onion A.V. Club, and even an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. With a $75 million budget, it would have had to sell out for five years to break even. The preview period kept getting extended, and finally theater critics had enough and wrote/ran reviews of the February 7, 2011 performance (which, had it not been pushed back again, was supposed to be the official opening date)... most of which were scathing. In response, the producers (finally!) panicked and brought in script doctors, along with having Bono and The Edge write new music. Director (and famous prima donna) Julie Taymor refused to go along with the changes and was either fired or quit. It finally opened on June 2011.
    • The troubles didn't stop there. Taymor filed suit against the producers and Bono and Edge, claiming not that she was unjustly fired but that they used her rewrites after they did, without giving her credit. By the time the show closed in 2014, six members of the cast and crew had suffered injuries, some nearly life-threatening. It was subject to a veritable tidal wave of parodies and satires in the pop culture. It never received more than mediocre reviews. And despite at times astounding box office receipts (it sometimes raked in over a million dollars in a week), it apparently never did break even.
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