Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Horrible is wonderful on the Internet.

Conceived by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a three-part musical miniseries, has become an online sensation since Part 1’s release Tuesday. The traffic quickly crashed the server for free-view website drhorrible.com, and iTunes’ downloadable version instantly became, at $1.99, the No. 1 video.

The musical stars How I Met Your Mother actor Neil Patrick Harris as tongue-tied super-villain Horrible, who hopes his freeze-ray gun will gain him standing with the Evil League of Evil and win him the girl of his dreams. Nathan Fillion (Desperate Housewives) co-stars as self-absorbed hero Captain Hammer. Felicia Day’s Laundromat girl captures both their hearts.

"We’re getting about 1,000 hits per second," says Jed Whedon, who worked on the project with his brothers, Joss and Zack, and his fiancée, Maurissa Tancharoen. "Joss has a lot of crazed fans. A fan leaked the trailer we were preparing for our website. Virally, it spread like wildfire."

Joss Whedon set out on the low-budget project during the writers’ strike as a lark and a labor of love — and to show the industry an out-of-the-box project could find an audience. But the overwhelming response has caught him by surprise.

"We had this home-baked idea that we love and we’re proud of," Whedon says. "We made this on the understanding that we’d never make a dime. But it’s blown up beyond our expectations."

Made in under a week and at a cost described as in the low six figures, Whedon may have stumbled onto a commercially viable formula for scripted Web video. "We’re hearing from a lot of people. We’re giggling that we’re being treated like savvy business people," Whedon says.

"There’s not a lot of money to be made yet — and you can’t throw a lot on it if you have no idea how to get it back," says Harris. "Joss has found a happy medium."

The second episode of Dr. Horrible is online today. The third will be released on Saturday. With a revenue sharing agreement with iTunes for all three and business opportunities opening up, Whedon is now considering further webisodes, as well as Broadway and film.

"We love the characters. We’ve done some cool things, and we think there’s more to do with them," says Tancharoen.