The writers’ strike that crippled Hollywood for many months was certainly painful for everybody in the industry, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon put his time off to good use. Whedon spent his time writing and directing a 42 minute “Internet miniseries event” entitled Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The production, which is an elaborate musical about a wannabe supervillain who longs to rule the world, stars Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother) as the title character, along with Nathan Fillion (Firefly) as his nemesis and Felicia Day (who played potential slayer Vi in Buffy season 7) as the girl he covets.
Read on for news about where you can catch Dr. Horrible, as well as a sneak peek at the exciting trailer.
The musical, which will be broken up into three chapters, will be streamed for free at DrHorrible.com. Part one will be available Tuesday, July 15, with the following segments hitting the web on July 17 and 19. Each chapter is about 14 minutes long and will stay online only through July 20. After that, Whedon is hoping to offer the entire thing for download for a small fee, and eventually has hopes of releasing a DVD featuring tons of extras. One of the extras will be the world’s first musical commentary, which Whedon is currently writing original songs for.
Dr. Horrible, which has been compared to both Little Shop of Horrors and Sweeney Todd, stars How I Met Your Mother‘s Harris as the wannabe mad scientist. He’s perfecting a “freeze ray” with the ability to stop time in hopes of conquering the world, but he also likes to interact with his snarky online following in his spare time. The only person who touches his heart is his Laundromat buddy Penny, played by Day, who falls for Dr. Horrible’s arch-nemesis Captain Hammer. Because Captain Hammer is a bit of a buffoon who is completely in love with his own awesomeness, he’s played by the always hilarious Nathan Fillion.
Whedon recently spoke with TV Guide’s Matt Roush about his decision to create the musical during the writers’ strike. “I was really sick of not doing things. . .I thought about doing this as a podcast just so I could write songs, like a radio show. And then when the strike happened, everything was about making online content. But everything was very overblown. Or underblown. It was either me and my video camera in my backyard or let’s partner up and get millions of dollars. Neither of these things was gonna fit the paradigm that will make me a musical, so I finally decided to do it myself.”
Whedon co-wrote the script with his brothers Jed and Zack, along with Jed’s fiancé Maurissa Tancharoen. Jed also helped write the songs, which range from lyrical ballads to hilarious, soaring anthems. Buffy scribes David Fury and Marti Noxon, who cameoed in that show’s musical episode “Once More With Feeling,” return as snarky newscasters, and rounding up the rest of the cast was fairly easy. Whedon had been a huge fan of How I Met Your Mother‘s Harris since seeing him on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins, and the actor agreed to play Dr. Horrible after one phone call.
Check out the trailer for the musical extravaganza below:
Aside from working on what’s sure to be the greatest Internet supervillain musical of all time, Whedon has also been hard at work on his new show, Dollhouse. That series will premiere on FOX early next year.
– Don Williams, BuddyTV Staff Writer
Source: TV Guide
(Image courtesy of Dr. Horrible’s Official MySpace Page)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
