Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Movie Makes 2023 Black List

Marvel Comics and its roster of characters have inspired a slew of blockbuster movies — and it sounds like a particularly infamous adaptation might follow suit. On Monday, the 2023 Black List was released, highlighting the best scripts that have yet to be produced or optioned by studios, as voted on by studio executives. One of the films on this year’s list includes Boy Falls From Sky, a biopic that would be based on the tumultuous production of the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Broadway musical. The script for Boy Falls From Sky is written by Hunter Toro, whose work includes Digman! and Bupkis. 

Boy Falls From Sky is just the latest Marvel-related movie to hit the Black List, after an Ironheart script surfaced on the 2018 list, and the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby biopic Excelsior! made the 2020 list. While there is no guarantee that Boy Falls From Sky will get made, 440 Black List movies have been put into production over the years, including Argo, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Revenant.

“This year, the industry was defined by a debate about the value of writers within it, and I think it’s inevitable that this year’s Black List means more than it has in the past,” said Black List founder Franklin Leonard. “I’ve been saying that writing is the lifeblood of the industry for almost twenty years now, and I’ll continue saying it until the industry actually starts acting like it. Now that the strikes are over, I look forward to these and other great scripts getting made so I can watch them as an audience member myself.”

What Is Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark About?

Turn Off the Dark was a Broadway adaptation of the mythos of Spider-Man, directed and co-written by Across the Universe’s Julie Taymor with original music by U2’s Bono and The Edge. Technical issues and major rewrites plagued the film prior to its original opening in 2011, including multiple actors getting injured while performing on-stage stunts.

By the time Turn Off the Dark closed in 2014, it was a financial failure and a pop-culture punchline, but it has almost become a cult-classic part of the Spider-Man fandom in the years since.

Will There Be a Spider-Man 4?

Another cinematic take on Spider-Man that fans are eager to see is Tom Holland’s next Spider-Man movie, which would be the latest co-production between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios. While Spider-Man 4 has not officially been greenlit yet, Holland recently hinted at the approach for the film.

“All I can say is that we have been actively engaging in conversations about what it could potentially look like for a fourth rendition of my character,” Holland told Collider. “Whether or not we can find a way to do justice to the character is another thing. I feel very protective over Spider-Man. I feel very, very lucky that we were able to work on a franchise that got better with each movie, that got more successful with each movie, which I think is really rare, and I want to protect his legacy. So, I won’t make another one for the sake of making another one. It will have to be worth the while of the character.”

What do you think of the first details around Boy Falls From Sky? Do you hope the film becomes a reality? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!