{"id":7517,"date":"2012-10-09T08:56:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T22:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/?p=7517"},"modified":"2012-10-09T08:56:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T22:56:23","slug":"new-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/blog\/2012\/10\/new-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Media Turns to the New: Dr. Horrible Strikes Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the\u00a0Knowledge@Wharton today\u00a0blog<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before he was the superstar writer\/director of the summer\u2019s big budget box office hit, The Avengers<\/em>, Joss Whedon created the modestly-budgeted musical comedy, \u201cDr. Horrible\u2019s Sing-Along Blog.\u201d Whedon intended \u201cDr. Horrible\u201d to serve as something of an experiment in new media production and distribution \u2014 at least in part. As Whedon told Knowledge@Wharton<\/a> in early 2009, \u201cIt was equal parts that and the love of the silly\u2026.\u00a0 We said we were going to roll it out for free and then put it on iTunes. We just steamrolled past everybody\u2019s idea of how you market \u2026 these things.\u201d The project was, as Whedon characterized it, \u201ca bit of a lark.\u201d But it was also a serious experiment to create and distribute content outside the conventional Hollywood machinery. \u201c[I]f somebody isn\u2019t out there creating a system wherein independent production can thrive, it will wither,\u201d Whedon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Horrible\u201d stars Neil Patrick Harris as the titular lovelorn villain, Felicia Day as the object of his affection, and Nathan Fillion as his arch-nemesis and romantic rival, Captain Hammer. Originally released online over the span of a week in three roughly 15-minute segments, the original plan<\/a> was to build audience buzz through the online release and then take the free version offline and make the three-part series available for purchase through iTunes. Shortly after becoming available on iTunes, however, all three episodes could be streamed for free (with advertising) on Hulu. Subsequently, \u201cDr. Horrible\u201d was released on DVD (and later Blu-ray), could be viewed online through Netflix, and spawned a book, comic book, audio CD, and digital audio download. On\u00a0Tuesday, the experiment comes full circle as Dr. Horrible debuts on the CW television network in the US.<\/p>\n

As Whedon noted in 2009, \u201cThe movies, TV \u2014 everything is melding, everything is shifting. If you saw it on a movie screen, it\u2019s going to be on your phone. That territory is moving \u2026 now in a destructive way because we\u2019re losing residuals. But eventually it\u2019s just going to be an inevitability that \u2026 the studios are going to have to rethink how they monetize [content].\u201d<\/p>\n

When Whedon spoke to Knowledge@Wharton in early 2009 \u2014 roughly six months after \u201cDr. Horrible\u201d first appeared online \u2014 the project had returned \u201cabout twice\u201d the original budget of roughly $200,000. At that early date, Whedon reported that iTunes had \u201cbeen a great boon\u201d and the DVD had \u201cdone quite well.\u201d The streamed online video with advertising was the \u201csmallest revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the \u201cold media\u201d veneer of television, the airing on TV could provide a significant boost to the revenues from \u201cDr. Horrible.\u201d As independent filmmaker Jon Foy told Knowledge@Wharton<\/a> last year following the release of his low budget independent documentary, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles<\/em>, \u201cIn this world of independent documentary film, broadcast is still where the biggest share of money is. Fewer people buy DVDs. And we all know that fewer people are going to the theatres. More people are streaming [movies] on Hulu and Netflix. Everyone in the independent film world is scrambling to figure out how to monetize that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 2009, Whedon was uncertain how his experiment would turn out. \u201cThis could just stand out as Camelot and disappear. Or it can be a model that is built on.\u201d More than four years after its original release in the summer of 2008, \u201cDr. Horrible\u201d is still going strong.<\/p>\n

Now that the original 43-minutes of \u201cDr. Horrible\u201d have played on multiple media, what\u2019s next? Will we see more of Dr. Horrible in the future? Whedon was asked this question this past July at San Diego Comic-Con.\u00a0As if to prepare the crowd for a letdown he began, \u201cThe thing you have to understand is\u2026\u201d He then abruptly cut off the rising disappointment with one word: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Neil Patrick Harris\u2019s Dr. Horrible states in the original series, \u201cThe world is a mess, and I just need to rule it.\u201d Although his character failed to do so, the series that tells his story has progressively conquered nearly every domain of the media landscape \u2013 both old and new.<\/p>\n

This post was previously posted in Knowledge@Wharton<\/a> today blog:\u00a0Old Media Turns to the New: Dr. Horrible Strikes Back<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the\u00a0Knowledge@Wharton today\u00a0blog. Before he was the superstar writer\/director of the summer\u2019s big budget box office hit, The Avengers, Joss Whedon created the modestly-budgeted musical comedy, \u201cDr. Horrible\u2019s Sing-Along Blog.\u201d Whedon intended \u201cDr. Horrible\u201d to serve as something of an experiment in new media production and distribution \u2014 at least in part. As Whedon told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12668],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation","category-knowledge-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7519,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517\/revisions\/7519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}