The squabble between Joss Whedon and Fox over his upcoming Dollhouse has officially been upgraded from kerfuffle to fiasco! As you’ll recall, the network had previously asked Whedon to shoot a new pilot, and production on the show was recently shut down for two weeks while he reworked a few scripts. Apparently things have not improved.
According to a post yesterday on Whedonesque, after repeated tries to salvage it, the show’s original pilot (which was to become its second episode) has been scrapped altogether, and a host of the network’s demands (“Up the stakes, make the episodes more stand-alone, stop talking about relationships and cut to the chase. Oh, and add a chaseâ€) have been incorporated. “Basically, the Network and I had different ideas about what the tone of the show would be,†Whedon writes. “They bought something somewhat different than what I was selling them, which is not that uncommon in this business.†Whedon says that he’s still happy — happier, in fact! — with the way Dollhouse continues to take shape, but at this point, is there any reason to believe it’ll make it to the end of its first season?
What happened when the lights went out. [Whedonesque]
Earlier: Uh-oh! Production on ‘Dollhouse’ Shuts Down
Joss Whedon Shooting New ‘Dollhouse’ Pilot; Is It ‘Firefly’ All Over Again?