‘Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark’ producers file lawsuit against former director Julie Taymor

More legal problems have come for the controversial $75 million Broadway show, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark. Julie Taymor, the show’s first director who helped develop the musical, filed a lawsuit against the current producers of the show in November, claiming that they continue to use her creative ideas without paying her. Tuesday, it was reported that they have now filed a countersuit.

According to The New York Times, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, the lead producers, claim that she “could not and would not do the jobs that she was contracted to do” and that the new work that has been done since she was fired are far removed from her original ideas.

In the court documents, Cohl and Harris claim that Taylor’s vision was too far removed from the “family-friendly” vision of the original Marvel Comics stories and the three films. "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,” they claim.

The New York Daily News reports that Cohl and Harris included a series of e-mails between Taymor and U2’s Bono and the Edge, who wrote the show’s music and lyrics. The e-mails show an ongoing argument between the two sides, and in one, Bono writes that Taymor is “shooting ideas down before taking time to understand them.”

Taymor’s lawyer, Charles Spada, told the Daily News that the claims are “baseless” with “outrageous mischaracterizations and attempts to besmirch her reputation.”

In November, Taymor had filed a lawsuit claiming that she deserves $1 million in unpaid royalties as the producers continue to make money off of her ideas.