Looks like Mr. Whedon and crew might have accidentally-by-design taught Hollywood a little lesson this week. Per the Chicago Sun-Times:

The first act in the 40-minute, 3-part musical premiered today and proved to be so popular, the official Web site (www.drhorrible.com) crashed due to the traffic (it’s subsequently been restored).

Act Two premieres Thursday and the final installment is up on Saturday.

All three segments will be available for free online until Sunday and then only available via iTunes. A DVD with extras is also in the works.

Whedon, who funded the project with his own money, is hoping to use the money from iTunes and DVD sales to actually pay the cast and crew.

Even more interesting are reports that when the server crashed on the Dr. Horrible site, people didn’t just click reload obsessively - they started to flock to iTunes to pay 2 bucks to download the chapter, making it one of the top buys for Tuesday and Wednesday. Pretty cool! Hopefully Hollywood is taking notes and sees that you can make money on this internet thing if you think a little creatively.

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