Two different friends in the Broadway community have told me we are about to get yet another announcement that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has postponed its opening. This is a rumor but it sure sounds likely to me.
The old date was March 15. I have no word on what a new date might be but I'll bet it's before April 28. That's the cut-off date on eligibility for this year's Tony Awards, which are being presented June 12. If you have a new show in New York, you want to be eligible this year and not wait 'til next time when you might not be around and when it may be too late for the heat from any Tony wins to help your box office.
Does the show stand a chance of winning some Tonys? Sure. A lot of folks have praised the art direction and lighting and elements of that sort.
Okay but those kinds of wins don't generally impact the box office. The producers of Spider-Man probably figure they have a good shot at some of the major ones, especially since the new, non-revival musicals that have opened so far this season on Broadway do not present highly formidable competition. They include Elf, Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Scottsboro Boys, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and probably one or two others I'm forgetting. It might be quite possible to snag some nominations against that field.
However, still to open before 4/28 we have Baby It's You, The Book of Mormon, Wonderland, Sister Act, Catch Me If You Can, The People in the Picture and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert…and again, I may have missed a couple. There's gotta be a couple of serious contenders in that list. (Personally, without seeing any of these, I'm rooting for Sister Act since a couple of my friends wrote it.) My guess is that the Broadway community will rise up against Spider-Man and deny it any big trophies. They did that with Young Frankenstein, which struck many as oversold and arrogant. Surely some see the Spider-Man show as even more of that.
We shall see what we shall see. The Tony Awards this year, by the way, will be coming our way from the Beacon Theater, which is on on Broadway but way, way up at 74th Street. Radio City Music Hall is unavailable due to its being filled with a new Cirque du Soleil production for a while. There's probably something symbolic there that relates to all the comments about Spider-Man being more like a Cirque show than a Broadway one but I'm too tired tonight to try and figure that one out.