BONO HAS EXPRESSED fears that the new Spider-Man musical he wrote with U2 bandmate the Edge “won’t get out the gate” if technical hitches in the staging persist.

The troubled show, which has been delayed several times and whose budget has now hit around €45m, will have to work hard to weave a profit in its first few years. The New York Times this week dubbed Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark show as “the most expensive in Broadway history”. The journalist who wrote the piece had been at rehearsals last Friday, eight days before the show is due to have its first public preview.  He witnessed “several pauses to deal with technical glitches” in the show’s huge special effects. He wrote:

At the creators’ last dinner on Friday night before Bono and the Edge left for a U2 tour in Australia, Bono said bluntly that the show “won’t get out of the gate” and have a chance to catch on with audiences if technical problems persist, as they have in rehearsals.

The musical is due to be previewed in New York on Sunday night and its Broadway opening is pencilled in for next January. It had been originally due to open earlier this year.

However, it will get a boost from the high-profile CBS programme 60 Minutes this Sunday evening. The programme’s producers have been following the U2 stars and the evolution of the show for the past year and a half. The resulting documentary will be shown at 7pm New York time, as the curtain goes up on its preview on a theatre on 42nd Street.

Each week’s delay has cost the show an extra $2m, according to the New York Times report. It is now also starring two virtual unknowns in the lead roles of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, Reeve Carney and Jennifer Damiano. The much better known names of Evan Rachel Wood (as Mary Kate) and Alan Cumming (who was pencilled in for the role of Green Goblin) departed from the production last April.

Still, the opening night is down as January 11 – here’s a sneak preview of what all the fuss is about: