U2 frontman Bono has admitted that the creators of the forthcoming Spider-Man musical underestimated production costs.

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is due to open for previews on Sunday (November 28) in New York following a string of delays.

Bono, who wrote the score to the musical alongside U2 bandmate The Edge, said he was looking forward to the opening.

But he told Billboard that bringing it to the stage had been “easier than we ever could have imagined, harder than we ever thought”.

“I mean, easier in the sense that the music came to us effortlessly” he continued.

“Dreaming up the show, the scale of it, the flying sequence, the pop art opera that it is – that was all pure joy. What we didn’t realise was how difficult it is to stage this stuff, both technically and financially.”

The Edge said he also expected the production to have an influence on the band’s future releases.

“As much as we've used our experiences with U2 to inform the way that we approach writing for this, we think that the opposite will happen, and when we come back to U2 Land, it'll be with a certain knowledge and sense of new thoughts and new ideas,” he said.

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is scheduled to open officially on December 21 at Foxwoods Theatre.

(by Jason Gregory)