U2's Spider-Man musical breaks Broadway box office records
The Edge said it's a "proud day" for everyone as the troubled show took £1.8m over nine performances last week
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a musical written by U2's Bono and The Edge, has broken box office records by taking more money in a single week than any show in Broadway history.
The stage show took $2.9 million (£1.8 million) over nine performances last week at the 1,930-seat Foxwoods Theatre in New York. The previous record was held by Wicked, which took $2.2 million (£1.4 million) across eight shows in a week in January 2011.
The Edge said it was a "proud day" for everyone involved in the production, which at $75 million (£48 million) to bring to fruition is also the most expensive in Broadway history.
Despite its record breaking credentials, the musical has had far from an easy run and was dogged with problems well before it first opened in November 2010. Injuries to actors, delays to the show, the loss of key crew members, royalties disputes and initially poor reviews all hampered the musical before its fortunes began to turn.
But "for all the problems, there was magic on the stage," said U2 front man Bono.
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"Things did get chaotic and messy after our producer, Tony Adams, died. But this week's news has us all giddy again and we are raising our glasses to Tony, to our indefatigable cast, crew, creative - and production team," he added.
Co-producer Jeremiah Harris, former chairman of Live Nation, who worked alongside Michael Cohl on the project, said they "came into a very difficult situation" when they joined the show.
"We've changed the team. We added players when we needed to. We've moved some players around to different positions. And the success we've had here is the culmination of all those people working hard to get done what we've gotten done," he said.
The production team claim Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been watched by more than 600,000 people in the past year.
