Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Perhaps you’ve heard of a little web series called “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog?” If not, the musical series, created by Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Whedon Tanchareon has had a long life beyond its initial Internet broadcast, spawning DVDs, live productions, and now a book. With Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog Book in stores today, we chatted with Zack Whedon about the lasting appeal of the series, what to look for in the book, and totally found out exactly what the title for the sequel will be. For real. Definitely. Cough:

MTV Geek: I’m guessing you get asked this all the time, but did you ever expect Dr. Horrible to have such a long life beyond being a web series you did on a lark?

Zack Whedon: No! The fact that I’m answering this question almost three years later is astonishing to me. We are thrilled and flattered and retracing our steps to try to find out what we did right.

Geek: Clearly web series production has changed a lot since you made this. If you had to do it again now, what would you do differently? What’s just perfect the way it is?

ZW: There isn’t much we’d do differently. There are some technical things we learned re: server capacity and business things but all in all we got a lot right the first time and there’s no real reason to mess with such a good thing. Writing it and making it were too much fun to try and do it differently.

Geek: The series also really changed a lot of people’s lives: Felicia Day and Neil Patrick Harris in particular. Do you take direct credit for that and really hold it over them all the time, asking for favors and whatnot?

ZW: We do and they totally get it. Neil is washing my car right now.

Geek: You’ve had a few live productions of the series… If a Producer approached you to do an ongoing Broadway run, would you do it? Or is it better to have these special one-offs?

ZW: There have been tons of live productions in high schools and colleges and small theaters all over. We went to a high school production in Los Angeles. Felicia and Nathan (Fillion) came. It was a lot of fun. Broadway is a place we are all fond of so we’ll see about that.

Geek: And as a follow-up, do you think more or less people would be injured during the production than on the Spider-Man musical?

ZW: We’d obviously go for the record because we don’t do things half way at Dr. Horrible; but it’s a lot easier when you’re TRYING to hurt people… Which we would be.

Geek: You’ve included the sheet music in the book… Is it nice that, beyond the concept and the execution, there’s so much love for the actual music in the series?

ZW: It is incredibly flattering to Jed and Joss and Maurissa who wrote that music. To me it’s just weird.

Geek: There’s some new material in the book – what can you tell us about that?

ZW: There is a roundtable discussion with the writers talking about the entire process, which is somewhat insightful and very goofy. There are contributions from Nathan, Neil, Simon and Felicia. The script for the show and for commentary is in there and then there’s the sheet music. It’s chock full of goodies.

Geek: The fans want to know: when are we going to see “Commentary: The Musical: The Book”?

ZW: We are going to first make a book about making the book. Then the Commentary book. Then the book about making that book.

Geek: I’ll be first in line! I’ve heard you’ve already started work on the sequel’s script – is that true? And if so, how far along are you?

ZW: Sort of! We all have worked on an outline together which is something. Jed and Maurissa wrote one of the songs. We aren’t far along. Maybe I should get to work on that.

Geek: It’s also been rumored that you guys know the title of the sequel. Care to break some news, eh? Eh?

ZW: I want to so bad. But... sorry.

Geek: Okay, I’ll throw a few out at you, and you let me know if I’m hot or cold on any of them:

 Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Tweets

 Bad Horse’s Revenge

 Penny’s From Heaven

ZW: You nailed it. Three for three. Back to the drawing board....