Knowledge@Wharton: To what extent was the original impetus behind “Dr. Horrible” to serve as an experiment for how web-based content can generate revenue?

Whedon: It was equal parts that and the love of the silly. The concept originated as an audio podcast that I would do myself because I was hungry to write some songs and I liked the idea of the character.

And then the Writer’s Guild went on strike. I tried to make some deals with Silicon Valley companies and song studios to create jobs and put out product. But it took so long trying to make a deal with these companies up north, that I missed my window. So I said, “I’ll just do it myself — if that’s okay with my wife.” And because I could not afford to do a huge, lavish production we did it with a ton of favors.

We were, at the time, very much in the spirit of the strike. By the time we finished writing ["Dr. Horrible"] and had everyone lined up, the strike was over and we all had shows to scramble to do. But we found a window to shoot it. It became us goofing around and just having a great time making a piece of art that we all enjoyed.

Once we finished … it was equal parts ethos and capricious glee. We said we were going to roll it out for free and then put it on iTunes. We just steamrolled past everybody’s idea of how you market and of how long it takes to do these things. We had people [drawing up] contracts in days that usually take months, because we were tired of people sitting around.

Ultimately, though, we were still in the mind of: This is a bit of a lark. The strike was over and so we wanted to do right by everybody, but we weren’t thinking it would be a grand statement. We thought it was going to be cool.

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