Courtesy Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark; Mark Wilson/ Getty Images

This ain't the kind of green goblin your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man's used to battling.

Production on the heavily hyped Broadway musical Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark—featuring music by U2's Bono and The Edge—has been shut down because backers can't seem to get their Spidey cents tingling.

Hello Entertainment, one of the principal producers of the megatuner, says in a statement the company has suffered an "unexpected cash-flow problem" that has prompted it to halt set construction and other shop work.

But does that mean the musical is going dark for good?

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The reigning queen of pop paid her respects to the late King of Pop Saturday night with a musical tribute to the star.

Madonna performed at the O2 in London, the same arena where Michael Jackson was set to stage his This Is It! series of concerts beginning July 13.

As Madonna sang "Holiday" during this stop on her Sticky and Sweet tour, a Jackson impersonator took the stage, sporting a sequin-embellished jacket, white glove, white socks and a white T-shirt. An image of a young Jackson was projected in the background.

The impersonator then moonwalked to Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

After Madonna shouted, "Let's give it up for one of the greatest artists the world has ever known," she and her dancers donned jeweled gloves on their right hands to honor Jackson in their last dance.

Madonna wasn't the only mega-star paying tribute to Jackson in recent days. At its world tour opening show in Barcelona last week, U2 performed "Angel of Harlem" and Bono threw in some lyrics to some of Jackson's greatest hits.

(Originally published July 4, 2009, at 11:05 p.m. PT)

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• U2 kicked off its 360 tour this week at Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium. Before a crowd of nearly 90,000, the band bled the end of "Angel in Harlem" into a Michael Jackson tribute, including the choruses of "Man in the Mirror" and "Don't Stop." We expect Bono and friends are giving us a taste of what will be a trend throughout the summer concert season.

• Mamma Mia! Supposedly, promoters are trying to woo ABBA into reuniting and filling the void in London's O2 schedule since M.J. won't be playing there anytime soon.

• Leonardo DiCaprio's on-again, off-again hottie gal-pal, Bar Refaeli, takes nearly two minutes to show you her tan lines (and then some).

• MTV reality show spoilers! Erin Lucas? Gone from The City! Joey with the tattoos? Gone from Real World: Cancun! Paris Hilton? Still looking for a BFF.

• Kim Kardashian doesn't bother with a garage sale. She puts her gently used goods on eBay for charity!

• Dear Mischa Barton: Enough of this already. We're ready for you to start living The Beautiful Life. Love, Rise 'n' Shine

Kendra Wilkinson sure looked lovely on her wedding day, didn't she? Relive her love life in Kendra & Hank's Romantic Timeline gallery!

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If you have stock in bedsheets, you may be more excited than most to watch U2's new video for their song "Magnificent." The band seemed to purchase quite a few (and very large ones at that) as a way to unveil a market in Morocco, all while Bono & Co. do what they do best.

The song is the second single off their latest album, No Line on the Horizon, and is the follow-up to the tune "Get on Your Boots."

So what do you think? Is it indeed magnificent, or do other, less favorable words come to mind?

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The Twilight soundtrack is officially undead—thanks in part to Robert Pattinson's singing debut.

The new deluxe version of the soundtrack, timed to the film's weekend DVD release and featuring Count Cullen's first recording effort, clawed its way back up the charts.

Yes, girls, he can croon, too.

Twilight shot up 11 spots to No. 3 with 74,000 in sales—a whopping 250 percent sales increase—trailing only Kelly Clarkson's All I Ever Wanted  (No. 1; 90,000) and U2's No Line on the Horizon (No. 2; 76,000), per Nielsen SoundScan.

The new double-disc Twilight package features five new songs, including the single "Spotlight" by Mute Math, an acoustic version of Paramore's "Decode" and Pattinson's "Never Think." A bonus DVD features interviews, music videos and live performances.

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All that snow shoveling, Letterman groveling and Amazon.com price cutting paid off for U2. The little band from Dublin did something few others could—knock Taylor Swift down a peg.

Powered by a massive media blitz, Bono and the boys saw their latest effort, No Line on the Horizon, sell 484,000 copies in its debut week, per Nielsen SoundScan, easily topping reigning chart champ Swift's Fearless.

Wonder if Sting bought a copy?

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The British Isles apparently aren't big enough for two altruistic acts.

Last night, on the third night of a weeklong residency on the Late Show With David Letterman, U2's The Edge proved that the No. 1 reason to read out the Top 10 list is the opportunity to call out a fellow righteous rocker, going off the teleprompter script to smack down lovingly reference tantric musicman Sting.

In addition to improving tenfold the original joke, The Edge's appropriately edgy ad lib also earned the approval of Letterman himself, who told the rocker during the obligatory handshake portion of the segment, "Very funny."

"I like that!" he announced after the barb.

Sting, on the other hand, might not. Though Chris Martin is no doubt thankful for the reprieve.

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If you thought U2 selling their new album for $3.99 on Amazon.com was a recession-friendly deal, No Doubt is about to put that to shame.

On Saturday, when fans buy the top price-level tickets ($42.50 or more before taxes and fees) to their latest tour, they'll receive free downloads of the band's entire catalog, including more than 80 tracks from the Gwen Stefani-fronted group's seven studio albums. The band's only new track—a cover of Adam and the Ant's "Stand and Deliver," which they'll play on the May 11 season finale of Gossip Girl—is a part of the package.

"Since the band is heading back on the road, we wanted to find a cool way to get people listening to our music and stoke them with a great deal at the same time," guitarist Tom Dumont says on their website. "With this download, it's easy for fans to get psyched up to hear our music live once again and that rocks."

Now you'll have no excuse to not know all the words when No Doubt's first tour in five years kicks off May 2 in Atlantic City and winds down in Irvine, Calif., Aug. 1.

Alexandra Wyman/Getty Images for Thelonious Monk Institute

Turns out there's even more on U2's horizon.

Still in the thralls of a virtually unprecedented publicity blitz to hype yesterday's release of No Line on the Horizon, the Irish rockers have announced they are already planning to drop another album of new material later this year.

The sister work is titled Songs of Ascent and is described as having a mellower vibe.

"We're making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent," Bono says in a new Rolling Stone interview. "It will have a clear mood, like [Miles Davis' masterpiece] Kind of Blue. Or [John Coltrane's seminal] A Love Supreme would be a point of reference, for the space it occupies in people's lives, which is to say, with that album, I almost take my shoes off to listen to it."

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U2 has come to a place where the streets do have a name: theirs, thanks to David Letterman.

Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. began their weeklong publicity blitz with a bang on last night's Late Show With David Letterman, kicking off a five-night residency on the show to promote their new album, No Line on the Horizon, which just so happens to drop today.

Coinciding with their weeklong Letterman gig, and to mark the unprecedented nature of the musical occasion, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose diminutive stature was incidentally the subject of much mocking on last night's show) will be renaming a Times Square street in honor of the Dublin band today.

Bloomberg is expected to temporarily rechristen West 53rd Street at Broadway—site of Letterman's home office, the Ed Sullivan Theater—"U2 Way."

In the meantime, U2's Monday performance was devoid of any diva behavior. Proving to be men of their lyrical words, the group got on their (snow) boots and proved they have an eye for a good photo op to be more than just "pretty boy rock 'n' rollers," doing their part to shovel their soon-to-be eponymous street following a big storm earlier in the day.

Courtesy Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark; Mark Wilson/ Getty Images

Broadway's Spidey senses are tingling.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the hyped stage musical directed by Julie Taymor (The Lion King) with music and lyrics courtesy of U2's Bono and The Edge, will kick off what its producers hope will be an amazing run along the Great White Way beginning with previews on Jan. 16, 2010, and a Feb. 18, 2010, opening night.

The $40 million effort, reportedly the most expensive Broadway production ever, will make its debut in the Hilton Theatre, the only venue big enough to allow the superhero room to spin his way around the sprawling skyscraper sets while duking it out with various bad guys.

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