Spider-Man Musical Does Someone Some Good - Playwright Lands 'Glee' Gig and 'Carrie' Remake

With all the bad buzz that "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" has received over the past few months, it's heartening to know that someone might benefit from all that hard work. It might not be the producers, who still have a good chunk of change to make before getting in the black. It sounds like it won't be audiences. It definitely won't be Julie Taymor.

But according to Deadline, the playwright they brought in to fix the whole affair, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, has now landed a regular writing job on "Glee" (which he'll also co-produce) and the task of remaking Brian De Palma's "Carrie." It's like a one-two punch of high school surreality..

Word around the campfire is that the remake will be more of a straight adaptation of the Stephen King novel than  De Palma's film. They, naturally, made comparisons to The Coen Bros. recent riff on Charles Portis' "True Grit," which escaped the feeling of a remake largely because no one under sixty even remembered the original film.

The team behind "Carrie" will have a harder time overcoming the cultural impact of "Carrie," and history has shown that straight adaptations of King's novels rarely succeed. The ones that stick - "The Shining," "Carrie" - tend to come from someone personally invested in the idea behind the material and coming up with their own interpretation from there. King fans will throw fits, but cinema will be better for it.

As for "Spider-Man," I've always hoped for the best for the show. It sounded monumentally ambitious, and I don't think that's the worst thing.

Word is that the new version improves on the show quite a bit, and I'll be interested to hear what critics think when the producers let them write.