You are all aware by now that I love me some super hero movies. But a musical? Based on... Spider-Man? The mind, as it attempts to crawl out of my ear, boggles.

I mean, what possible reason is there to create a musical based on Spider-Man? And lest you think this is some sort of macho "theater sucks" thing, rest assured that I saw a Broadway show last weekend ("Macbeth" with Patick Stewart, shockingly horrible) and will be seeing another in two weeks ("Boeing Boeing"). So I don't hate Broadway, or even musicals, as an art form. This particular one, however, can't possibly be good.

Or could it? The creative team is as follows: Julie Taymor, who directed the wildly successful Disney stage adaptation of "The Lion King", and for music, you have -- wait for it -- Bono and The Edge. Now, I suppose some would be excited about this. How could a musical with songs from the two main parts of U2 be bad? Well, Paul Simon had a Broadway show ("The Capeman") which was, by all accounts, hideously bad. Numerous jukebox musicals (shows based on existing songs) have flopped, and many were based on good material (Bob Dylan, John Lennon and The Beach Boys, to name a few). In other words, success in one medium is no guarantee of success in another. And Taymor's only other Broadway credit was "The Green Bird", which nobody really liked very much.

This article has nothing but good things to say about Spidey's prospects on Broadway, but even with this potentially potent team of Peter Parker interpreters, I am not at all optimistic. Supposedly the show is due in NY in 2009. So we'll just have to see. "To be continued..."

image: Amazon.com