The Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark has come close to killing a good number of its actors, but now it looks like the musical has finally provided one of its actors with something other than crippling injuries. A press release has been sent out announcing that Reeve Carney, who stars as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the Julie Taymor show, has signed on to play Jeff Buckley in a biopic about the tragic singer.
Currently untitled, the project sports Welcome to the Rileys-helmer Jake Scott as the director and Ryan Jaffe as the screenwriter. Mary Guibert, Buckley's mother, has signed on to the film as an executive producer and the film has attained both music rights and optioned the David Browne book "Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley" for research purposes. The story will chronicle the life of the up-and-coming performer, who died at the age of 30 in Memphis, Tennessee’s Wolf River when he was pulled into the wake of a boat and drowned. The artist only released one album before his death, 1994's Grace, but famous worldwide for his cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
Carney has had some previous film experience, with roles in Snow Falling on Cedars, Spread, and Taymor's The Tempest and his band, Carney, recently opened for U2 on the last stop of the U2 360° tour. Asked about Carney's casting, Guibert said, "We are over the moon that Reeve has agreed to take on this challenging role. I've seen him perform several times...he's been getting ready for this all his life. It certainly doesn't hurt that he looks so much like Jeff."
Because I've never watched anything from Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark (I love webhead way too much to see him go through that), my knowledge of Carney's work is fairly limited, though I know that he also recently performed one of the show's songs on American Idol. So what do we think, Jeff Buckley fans? Is this the right man for the job?
