Updated: Julie Taymor Cancels on NY Times Talks Event

Though no official cancellation notice has gone up on the NYT Arts & Leisure Weekend's web site for a scheduled conversation on January 8th between Patrick Healy of the Times and currently troubled SPIDER-MAN director Julie Taymor, ticket buyers are telling us that they received a refund notice yesterday and the event is no longer on sale, marked as cancelled on the ticket sales web site. 

Update: An official reason has now been given, that "with the changes in the ‘Spider-Man' production schedule, Julie will be deep in rehearsals and will not be available to participate."

In 1998, Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony® Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony® for Best Costumes, for her groundbreaking production of The Lion King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor's direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask and puppet designs.

Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, nominated for five Tony® Awards. Other theatre work includes The Green Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Transposed Heads and Liberty's Taken. Taymor's feature film directorial debut, Titus, starred Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming. In 2002, her biographical film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, earned six Academy Award® nominations, winning two. She took on the music of the Beatles, and earned a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, in Across the Universe. Julie's next film, The Tempest, will have its North American premiere at the 48th New York Film Festival in October 2010, following a world premiere at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.

Taymor's visually exhilarating adaptation of the William Shakespeare play features an all-star cast including Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina, and will be released by Touchstone Pictures on December 10. Beyond the theatre and screen, Taymor has directed five operas internationally including Oedipus Rex with Jessye Norman, for which she earned the International Classical Music Award for Best Opera Production. A subsequent film version premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won her an Emmy® award. Taymor also directed Salome´, The Flying Dutchman, Die Zauberflöte (which has been in repertory at The Met for six years), The Magic Flute (the abridgEd English version of Die Zauberflöte, which inaugurated a new PBS series entitled "Great Performances at The Met") and Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel. Taymor is a 1991 recipient of the MacArthur "genius" Fellowship.