Rock singer Reeve Carney will portray Peter Parker in Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, the Broadway musical based on the exploits of the Marvel Comics superstar. Carney joins a cast that already includes Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane, and Alan Cummings as Norman Osborn. The troubled production, which still needs to get all its financial ducks in a row, will debut sometime in 2010 at the Hilton Theater, which is undergoing heavy reconstruction.

The cost of converting the theater for the effects-heavy musical is part of the show’s financial problems.  In an article entitled “On Broadway, Spider-Man’s Greatest Enemy Is the Budget” in Friday’s Los Angeles Times, John Horn estimates that the producers of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark may need to raise as much as $24 million to cover its $52 million budget. If the show does manage to open, it will require a million dollars a week in fixed “running” costs.  Insiders report that Spiderman Turn Off the Dark requires at least 40 stagehands to operate the elaborate backstage rigging involved in the show’s spectacular aerial effects.  According to Horn, the cost of mounting and maintaining the show means that the Spider-Man musical “will have to sell out every show for as many as four years (a feat only a handful of Broadway shows ever manage) simply to break even.”