“Horrible” Crashes Site

Joss Whedon’s internet-only presentation of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” was so popular for its opening night (Monday) online that the over 200,000 hits per hour literally crashed the Dr. Horrible Website.

It cost viewers $1.99 per download from iTunes, on which it was rated the N0. 1 video download on Monday and Tuesday, and was free on Drhorrible.com. It was that free offer that drove the site to cave-in under the weight of all the mouse clicks it received. It required a last minute scramble by Joss’ brother Jed to find a larger server capable of handling the overwhelming amount of traffic. Once that was done, the site was back up and running bright and early Tuesday morning.

Part two of the series will be online and iTunes on Thursday (July 17). “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” stars “Firefly”-“Serenity” Whedon alum Nathan Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day.

“It’s about a low-rent super villain [Harris as Dr. Horrible] who’s trying to get into the Evil League of Evil and defeat his nemesis, Captain Hammer [Fillion] and work up the nerve to talk to the pretty girl at the laundromat [Day],” Whedon said . “It’s an idea I had a while ago, that I thought would be just right for a weird little Internet venture. I wrote it with my brothers [Zack and Jed Whedon] and my brother [Jed’s] fiancée [Maurissa Tancharoen] and somehow got the best actors I know to just jump in, which was very scary for all of us.”

[To view the Joss Whedon/Dark Horse MySpace page for “Captain Hammer Comics” click on the above image]