‘Spider-Man’ Producers Sue Taymor for Breach

The producers of “Spider-Man” fired back at ex-director Julie Taymor
on Tuesday, portraying her in a lawsuit as a money-grubbing diva who nearly sabotaged the musical.


In the Manhattan Federal Court suit, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris slammed Taymor’s “hallucinogenic”
and
lurid vision of the show and said she routinely rejected advice to improve it.


“Taymor refused to develop a musical that followed the original, family-friendly ‘Spider-Man’ story, which was depicted in the Marvel comic books and the hugely successful motion picture trilogy based on them,” the suit charges.


“Instead, Taymor, who admits that she was not a fan of the ‘Spider-Man’ story prior to her involvement with the musical, insisted on developing a dark, disjointed and hallucinogenic musical involving suicide, sex and death” the suit says.


Since Taymor was fired from the show in March, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has become one of the top-grossing shows on Broadway.


Bono, who worked with Ms. Taymor to develop “Spider-Man” for several years and had once called her “my close friend,” wrote an e-mail last Jan. 7 criticizing her for “shooting ideas down before taking time to understand them,” according to the producers’ lawsuit. (Bono wrote the score of the musical with his band mate the Edge.)


Glen Berger, a playwright Ms. Taymor had hired to help her write the “Spider-Man” script, wrote to a colleague on the show last Jan. 20 that Ms. Taymor had threatened to stop collaborating with him if he sided with the producers over ideas to change and possibly improve the musical.


Referring to the producers, Mr. Berger wrote: “If they want to know what my ideas are, damn straight I’m going to tell them my ideas — they have every right in the world to know. And yeah, Julie forbade me from telling them, and said she wouldn’t be able to work with me if I started telling other people my ideas, or if I even started bringing them up to her. That was wrong of her.”


Mr. Berger sent the e-mail to Daniel Ezralow, a longtime colleague of Ms. Taymor’s and the musical’s sole choreographer at that point.


The countersuit also attributes statements to Ms. Taymor that portray her as dismissive about the producers’ desires to improve the musical — including the use of an expletive in declaring that she did not care whether audiences liked her version of “Spider-Man.” That comment could not be independently verified; a phone call to Ms. Taymor’s home was not answered on Tuesday.


Ms. Taymor’s credits and biography were recently deleted from the official “Spider-Man” Web site, and Mr. McKinley is now the only person listed on the site with the title of director. A spokesman for the show said he did not immediately have information about when or why Ms. Taymor was scrubbed from the site; he said that she is still credited as original director in audience Playbills.


Ms. Taymor’s union has been pursuing an arbitration claim against the “Spider-Man” producers, Mr. Cohl and Mr. Harris, claiming she is owed more than $500,000. The producers also filed an antitrust lawsuit on Tuesday against Ms. Taymor’s union.