Dollhouse

It’s Paley Fest 2009 and Joss Whedon is dishing out all the dirt on Dollhouse Season 2 and that mysterious 13th episode. Will Dollhouse return? Will we see the 13th episode? And what’s the deal with this post apocalyptic horror film? Hit the jump for full details from the Paley Fest Dollhouse panel.

Joss Whedon - I’ve been talking with the network and the studio which are two very separate entities, although they have the same name, about this episode. It was made for the studio because they needed a 13th for foreign DVD, they didn’t even watch us make it because we made it on the cheap. It’s very strange and to me extraordinarily lovely episode and they weren’t necessarily going to air it and FOX studios was sort of going (in a mad scientist voice) ‘This is the DVD extra, we’ll sell all the DVDs in the world!’ And they weren’t really pushing it on the network. I’ve been sitting down with them saying I just want this to air as part of the season, I’m really proud of it. It’s unbelievably strange and they just said, ’OK we’re gonna take a look at it,’ and we’ve been talking to each other, so the jury is out on that right now.

Episode 12, Omega was meant to be the season finale. The birth of the 13th was very strange. They said ‘Can’t you just do a clip show?’ And I said that sounds lame. They said, ‘Can’t you show the pilot?’ I’m like no, that wouldn’t make any sense. And we’ve [already] cannibalized it for parts and it appears in almost every episode, so we couldn’t do that. And they’re like ‘But we’ve promised foreign DVD 13, it’s a thing we have to have. And I’m like, look, I can’t help you with your problems. I’m an artist. But I could shoot a weird post apocalyptic horror movie on the sets on video and pepper it with scenes of these people and do it while we’re filming everything else concurrently and it will hardly cost you anything and it will be the strangest most awesome thing you’ve ever had. And we made it and I’m just so proud of it.

We also talked about next season, they called me specifically to say we’ve been hearing you sound a little despondent, being very clear about this, the show is not cancelled. The numbers have been soft, but the demographic is wonderful. DVR is great, they [FOX] are big fans of the show and they’re waiting to see what happens, so now I’ve gone from a place that’s sort of ehhhhhh, they don’t even care, no one loves me, to a place of - God, I can’t believe I’m saying this...hope.

We might get the chance to do the thing we’re dying to do which is tell more of these stories with these crazy people because we have so many more yet to come. So basically It’s about what happens in the next few weeks. We have a few more episodes coming up whether it’s 12 or 13 and they are fierce, they are ridiculous I’m so proud of them. I know that we’re gonna go out of this season with a bang and hopefully get to come back for # 2.