Recently, Neil Patrick Harris spoke with MTV News about the future plans for the “Dr. Horrible” sequel. The biggest bomb NPH dropped was the possibility of the “Dr. Horrible” sequel being a full-length film.
Some of you may be unfamiliar with “Dr. Horrible.” It wasn’t a film or television series or a book. “Dr. Horrible” is a “sing-along blog” that was came about because of the writers’ strike. It was created by Joss Whedon (creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly” among others) and stars Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. As the description asserts, it is in fact a musical. The first act of “Dr. Horrible” premiered on July 15, 2008, online and promptly crashed the server. The next two acts followed within the next four days and together they were available for free for a while and then they were available for purchase on iTunes. It became a pretty big deal and led to a soundtrack, DVD, comic book, T-shirts and, most importantly, for this article a supposed sequel.
Speaking with MTV News, Neil Patrick Harris talked about the plans for the sequel to “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” which include making it a full-length film. However, the planning hasn’t gone much farther than that. Neil Patrick Harris poses some of the difficulties a full-length film would face: a larger production value would go against the spirit of the first “Dr. Horrible” and the actors’ busy schedules have to be taken in account. Interestingly, NPH talks about Felicia Day’s schedule, which seems to signal her return for the sequel.
I have to agree with NPH about how making an “$80 million giant movie” would be contradictory to the creation of “Dr. Horrible.” “Dr. Horrible” was an attempt by Joss Whedon to make a relatively inexpensive, professional piece “specifically for the Internet.” One of the focal points of the writers’ strike was that writers felt they were not getting fairly compensated with regards to new mediums such as On-Demand and the Internet. Thus, when “Dr. Horrible” was finally on iTunes for purchase, Whedon urged viewers to buy and not pirate the series, because his crew deserved to be paid.
Not only would a full-length movie conflict with the idea behind “Dr. Horrible,” but it could also create further delay. A full-length movie has to find funding, get distributing, go through the MPAA and would have to appeal to a bigger audience, which could create a more generalized feeling — like “Firefly’s” film follow-up, “Serenity.”
However, all my nay saying is really for naught. I love “Dr. Horrible” and still have the soundtrack in my car. I will watch it no matter what form it takes or how long the wait is.
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Follow Allison Higginbotham on Twitter at http://twitter.com/allisonbh.
Yes please.
Fantastic news.
I’d be there opening day.
Well I knew of the blog, but never watched it, then a short time after it was done I saw it was n Instant Watch and my friend Jessika and I watched it together and loved it! It was corny, yet funny and cheesy and ironic. Needless to say I have the soundtrack on my ipod