Entertainment

‘Dark’ sure to be turned off

I rest my case.

“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” is no longer an out-of-control curiosity in which somebody might get killed.

Now, buried under an avalanche of mostly negative reviews, it’s just another Broadway flop — more expensive than every other, but a flop nonetheless.

So how long will it take to die?

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The flacks will spin a tale of allegedly “strong” ticket sales. Celebrity friends of Bono and director Julie Taymor will plump for it on their talk shows. Glenn Beck will see it a fifth time.

But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

“The show is dead,” says a source privy to its finances.

The hard-cash advance is barely $10 million, not enough to prop up a $65 million production with a weekly overhead of $1.2 million.

You can buy acres of orchestra seats weeknights this month and next. The ticket brokers who drive business are sitting on stacks of unsold seats through April. If you know where to look, you can get discounts pretty much every night.

Depending on how much more money its backers are willing to lose, my hunch is that “Spider-Man” will stagger through the spring, pick up with the tourist traffic in the summer and then collapse in the fall.

It should be gone by September.

Of course, all bets are off if another actor — or an audience member — gets hurt. And if somebody gets killed, “Spider-Man” could run longer than “Cats.”

But don’t count on it.

Killing people may put you on the front page, but it is not, on the whole, a sound business plan.

How did it all go wrong?

In a nutshell, “Spider-Man” never had what every hit show has — a tough, creative producer.

Taymor was allowed to run wild with the budget, the special effects and all of her pretentious nonsense about Greek mythology and Peter Parker’s search for identity.

She rehearsed 15 weeks and never got through the show. She had nearly three months of previews and fixed nothing. And nobody challenged her.

She’s always been a self-absorbed spendthrift. But she came up with “The Lion King,” so she was a genius. Now, with “Spider-Man,” she’s finished.

Sure, she’ll work in nonprofit theaters and opera houses in Europe. And she’s got $30 million from “The Lion King.” But no one will hire her to direct another Broadway musical.

Michael Cohl, the official lead producer, is a cynical rock-concert promoter brought in by Bono to save the show when the original producer, a nincompoop named David Garfinkle, couldn’t raise the money.

Cohl did his job. He got the show on. And he cleverly made it clear in interviews last fall that he really wasn’t responsible for the creative end of things.

But he presided over chaos because, as a source says, “he has no idea — he really doesn’t care — about how Broadway works.”

Cohl got a kick out of all the press attention, however. When he saw me at the first preview, he said: “I don’t care what you write. Just make sure it’s on the front page.”

A source says that when one actor got injured, Cohl said: “We’ll be on the front page tomorrow, and we’ll sell some more tickets.”

But the actors never had any confidence in him. When, at a cast meeting after Chris Tierney fell into the orchestra pit, Cohl assured everyone they’d be safe, one of the actors yelled: “You, I don’t trust!”

As for Bono, he’s washed his hands of this fiasco. When he finally got around to seeing it, he knew it was a mess, sources say.

Which is why he didn’t bother to write any new songs. Instead he headed to Davos, Switzerland.

Better to sip wine with media moguls in a chalet than watch your bomb go off on Broadway.