Dr. Horrible Live!

The first act of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, an Internet superhero musical featuring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day, is now available for your viewing pleasure.

Whedon describes the plot as "the story of a low-rent super-villain, (Harris) the hero who keeps beating him up, (Fillion) and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to.” (Day). Act One clocks in at 13:49. It's kind of cute. There's plenty of music, action and humor. Plus, Neil Patrick Harris sure is adorable!

Here's the rest of the schedue:
Act Two will go up Thursday July 17th.
Act Three will go up Saturday July 19th.
All acts will stay up until midnight on Sunday July 20th.

Coming to a computer near you

Writer/director Joss Whedon has released the schedule for his Internet miniseries event Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, featuring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day.

Act one will go up Tuesday July 15th.
Act two will go up Thursday July 17th.
Act three will go up Saturday July 19th.
All acts will stay up until midnight on Sunday July 20th.

Then, Whedon says, "they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that's still playing. Like, everywhere.)" The entire show will be available for download and, eventually on DVD "with the finest and bravest extras in the land."

Whedon, the creator of television series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, says he came up with the idea for the musical in a moment of frustration at a lack of momentum during last fall's writers' strike.

"I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy,'' he said. "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."

Just a little tease

In March, I wrote about a new project by writer/director Joss Whedon, a musical for the Internet featuring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. Whedon developed it during the writers' strike last year, working with his two brothers and his brother's fiancee. He describes the plot as "the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to.”

Well now Whedon, who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has posted a teaser video from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It's only about a minute long, and there's no singing. In fact, it looks more like an action movie than a musical. But since Harris plays the title role, and he has a gorgeous voice, and he's got a couple of Broadway musicals on his resume, I'm crossing my fingers that he gets a chance to sing. Hey, it's a musical. Somebody's gotta sing, right?

According to the official fan site, Whedon, Harris, Day and Fillion will make a presentation at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 25, so hopefully there'll be more details. The plan is to release the musical first on the Internet, then on iTunes and then as a dvd. In an interview with SciFi Weekly, Whedon said "It's going to be the finest 40-minute musical since the last one I made."

An Internet superhero musical

I have to admit, I'm not a Joss Whedon fan. I never watched Firefly or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nothing against him personally - they're just not my cup of tea. I find anything with the word "vampire" in the title a turnoff. But this item from TV Tattle got my attention. Whedon is developing a live-action superhero musical for the Internet featuring Neil Patrick Harris.

Whedon posted an item about the musical to a fan site, whedonesque.com. It'll be called Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. (Ok, I admit that the name doesn't sound too promising.) In addition to Harris in the title role, the series will also feature two actors who have worked with Whedon before: Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer and Felicia Day as Penny, as well as a cast of dozens.

Apparently, he started to work on the musical during the writers' strike and intended it as a limited series of three 10-minute episodes. Shooting has started, and Whedon reveals a little bit about the plot: "It's the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he's too shy to talk to."

Like most people, I only knew Harris as Doogie Howser M.D., from the popular sitcom that ran from 1989 to 1993. Then, I heard him sing on the 2004 Broadway cast CD of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins. And I rented the concert version of Sweeney Todd, in which he plays Tobias Ragg. Wow, what a beautiful crisp, clear, voice.

Harris is now in a hit TV series, How I Met Your Mother, (pictured at top) so a return to the stage probably isn't in the cards for awhile. Since my chances of hearing him sing are pretty slim, I'll take what I can get. Even if it's only 30 minutes long.