This weekend saw the cast reunion of not one, but two different Joss Whedon TV series. At yesterday’s New York Comic Con, Nathan Fillion joined the rest of the Firefly cast in front of a packed crowd of brown coats. It may have been 13 years since the series went off the air, but the consensus was that everyone involved would totally be down for another go-round of the cult classic.
This was just the kicker as later that evening, New York’s Paleyfest kicked off with a screening and Q&A of Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog. Fillion was once again in attendance and joined by mini-series co-stars Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day, along with the man himself, Joss Whedon. During the night’s festivities, Variety reports that — according to Whedon — he made more on this project than with 2012’s The Avengers, which “grossed more than $600 million domestically.”
The musical project was put into play during the 2007 – 2008 Writers Strike and soon the collaboration was underway and eventually took the internet by storm. Whedon admitted he ended up funding the project out of his own pocket, by saying, “This is my mid-life crisis. It isn’t a car — it’s an Internet musical.” Originally released over a three night period in July of 2008, Dr. Horrible soon became available on iTunes and Hulu before being acquired by the CW in 2012.
In an era before the Internet was concretely established as a platform for such entertainment, the four reminisced on the times had on the bare-bones production. The slim crew led to more means of improvisational creativity on set. As well, the musical sequences were filmed with a crew member carrying boombox while the actors lip-synced along as best they could.
Whedon pointed to the success of Dr. Horrible as the stepping stone to his 2012 black-and-white version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Today, it looks like everyone involved with the project has moved onto bigger and better things. Harris is the host of his own variety show, Felicia Day maintains creative control over Geek & Sundry, and Fillion’s role on Castle is still going strong after eight seasons. As for the Marvel-ous man himself, Whedon has been quite busy in recent years what with those Avengers movies and the ABC series Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD.
When the question about the possibility a Dr. Horrible sequel was posed to the man, he confirmed there was ongoing interest there by stating that two weeks after the show premiered, the creative team began brainstorming on future stories and writing more music. However, things were soon put on hold as Whedon explained, “I went to work at Marvel and the rest is a blur.”
(Via Variety)
