THE MAKERS of the new Spider-Man musical on Broadway has been hit with yet more bad luck, after they were forced to delay the show’s opening night for the fourth time.

The $65m show, ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ – the most expensive ever created for Broadway – will now open on March 15, having previously been rescheduled for February 7, after producers said the show’s intensive preview schedule had left insufficient time to finalise a new final scene.

“We simply need more time to fully execute the creative team’s vision before freezing the show,” co-producer Michael Cohl told the NY Daily News, scrapping two further preview shows.

The announcement comes just three weeks after high-wire stunt performer Christopher Tierney fell 30 feet from a stage, being left with four broken ribs, three broken vertebrae, and injuries to his head and elbow. His was the fourth major accident to befall performers in the work.

Just days after that, actress Natalie Mendoza dropped out of the show, after she was concussed on the first preview night.

The show, with music from Bono and the Edge, has not met with universal poor fortune, however: the string of accidents on the show has, bizarrely, led to a spike in ticket sales.

CNN quotes the New York Times as indicating that the show topped the list of Broadway’s highest grossing offerings last week, outselling previous kingpin ‘Wicked’, reaching $1,588,514 in sales.

The Washington Post quotes one recent audience member as explaining the attraction thusly:

It’s like Formula One. You want to see the car crash… we like to go to Rockefeller Center to watch the ice-skaters fall.