Back in the deep dark days of the US writers’ strike, a number of America’s top telly scribes found themselves at a loose end. One in particular — Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Angel and Firefly — used the downtime to come up with a new project: a web-based musical.
Well, strictly speaking, it’s a musical that’s (initially) distributed via the web. But, from the man who came up with the classic musical episode of Buffy, Once More, With Feeling, Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is bound to be exceptional viewing.
Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother) and Nathan Fillion (Firefly) star in this three-act musical. Each act will be released to be viewed for free next week (Act I Tuesday 15th, Act II Thursday 17th, Act III Saturday 19th), but will only be available until midnight July 20th. After that time, they’ll be available as a paid-for download, and eventually as a DVD.
Whedon has been kind enough to share Dr Horrible’s master plan:
Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system.
Frustrated with the lack of movement on that front, I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.
The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap - but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.
It’s Joss Whedon. It’s the internet. It’s a musical. What’s not to like?
So that's what happened to Dougie Howser! he grew up. Looks like fun:-)