WHEN last we checked in on David Garfinkle, the hapless pro ducer of “Spider- Man, Turn Off the Dark,” currently shaping up to be the most expensive train wreck in Broadway history, he was looking very much like David Hedison in “The Fly.”
“Help me! Help me!” he squeaked as he struggled to break free of my web — and get his $45 million musical back on track.
Work on the show was suspended last month because Garfinkle, a novice theater producer of the first rank, ran out of money. Since then, Broadway has been rife with speculation that “Spider-Man” is doomed.
But with the news this week that Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment, which owns the Spider-Man character, is it possible that help is on the way?
Yes — but it’s not coming from Disney.
The company, I’m told, has no interest in taking over the troubled show. And why should it? Disney is, after all, adept at producing expensive duds of its own, such as “Tarzan” and “The Little Mermaid.”
Besides, by the time the deal with Marvel goes through, “Spider-Man” will either be up and running or, more likely, interred in the Hilton Theatre mausoleum with the bones of the other fiascoes that have played that barn — “Young Frankenstein,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “The Pirate Queen.”
No, the help — or, more accurately, the cash — is said to be coming by way of Bono, who, with The Edge, has written the score to “Spider-Man.”
Bono’s too smart to put his own money in the show, but word on the street is that he’s tapped into his vast network of rich friends and business associates to restart production.
Designers and some stagehands go back to work today.
Bono feeds half of Africa, so raising a few more million for “Spider-Man” shouldn’t be too difficult.
Whether it’s wise is another question.
Money is only one of the show’s problems.
“Spider-Man” will be the target of the new theater season. Every vulture in Shubert Alley will be at the first preview. If the thing’s a mess, the poisonous word will spread quickly.
Advance ticket sales — the lack of them, that is — is another problem. Even before the show ground to a halt last month, tickets were hardly selling at a clip. It’s said that the advance is not much more than $1 million, pathetic for a $45 million musical that’s supposed to be on the boards just five months.
“We couldn’t sell the show before it shut down,” says a top ticket agent.
There’s also the question of who’s in charge. The creators have lost faith in Garfinkle. Bono’s reportedly furious and embarrassed by the debacle, while director Julie Taymor‘s running around town telling everybody that it’s not her fault the show’s budget is the size of a stimulus package from the Obama administration.
“He won’t have any authority,” a veteran producer says of Garfinkle. “This is a show without a producer.”
Meanwhile, as of yesterday afternoon, the Hilton was still an empty and forlorn-looking place.
One Broadway insider reports that, if you walk by the stage door and ask the doorman what’s going on with the show, he says, with authority, ” ‘Spider-Man’ will begin previews Feb. 25 as previously announced.”
Maybe he’s in charge.
I see Liz Smith, in Vari ety, has laid down the law on the Tony Awards.
Discussing what she called the Tonys’ “silly” and “shortsighted” decision this summer to strip the first-night press of its voting powers, Smith wrote, “This columnist won’t be promoting or helping the award show itself, if we can avoid it.”
It’s fun to see the press turn on the Tonys, and, in solidarity with Liz, this columnist will from now on refer to the awards as “The hopelessly compromised, conflict-riddled Tony Awards.”
And, if I have room, I’ll add: “which are run by those two bloated and useless organizations, the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League.”
michael.riedel@nypost.com