'Dr. Horrible' To Premiere July 15, Then Vanish

A recent post on Whedonesque.com outlines the release of the highly anticipated Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a new web-exclusive show starring Neil Patrick Harris created by Buffy director Joss Whedon during the writer’s strike (the trailer was leaked last Thursday). The show, labeled as “an internet miniseries event,” will attempt to create appointment viewing on the web through scheduled airdates starting July 15, where fans can watch the show’s installments every other day for free until midnight Sunday July 20th, when “they will vanish into the night.”

The plan is to create a highly publicized launch to promote pay downloads and DVD sales of the show: “We intend to make it available for download soon after it’s published. This would be for a nominal fee, which we’re hoping people will embrace instead of getting all piratey. We have big dreams, people, and one of them is paying our crew. And somewhat later, we will put the complete short epic out on DVD –with the finest and bravest extras in all the land.” Whedon told TV Guide that the DVD extras will include a musical commentary that will be another completely original musical of all commentary songs, which are currently being written.

Will this monetization strategy work? “Whether this has any impact on the Internet is unclear to me,” says Whedon. “It will be something that hasn’t been done. And although some people came up with a plan on how to monetize this right away, our first priority was to put this out. We do it for the fans, we do it as an advertisement for itself and for just this culture, this idea of people who are doing something smaller scale but hopefully in such a way they can reach a lot of people. And maybe then it can make us an eleven-ty kadillion dollars. Or maybe it won’t.”

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th