Whedon’s web musical mini-series "Dr. Horrible" airs next week

Joss Whedon ’87 is either our craziest alum or most genius alum yet… or both. What is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog? Apparently, it’s an attempt by Whedon to break out of the huge- corporation- controlling- every- aspect- of- the- show nature of the modern television and film industry. The miniseries will air over the Internet in three ~14 minute installments on July 15, July 17, and July 19. It stars Neil Patrick Harris (aka Barney from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, where he plays one of the only main characters who DIDN’T attend Wesleyan). (Oh, and it also has Nathan Fillion aka Mal from Firefly)

From Joss Whedon’s Master Plan (which is hilarious and worth reading), he writes:

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.

Watch the preview: