Production
The series stars Eliza Dushku, who worked with Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain were the showrunners, while Jane Espenson, Tim Minear and Steven S. DeKnight served as consulting producers. In addition to Joss Whedon, the writing staff included Tim Minear, Jed Whedon (Joss' brother), Maurissa Tancharoen (Jed's wife), Andrew Chambliss, Tracy Bellomo, Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain. Whedon directed a number of his own episodes, as he has done for many of the shows he created. Tim Minear and Buffy producer David Solomon also directed. Fox used a viral marketing campaign to promote Dollhouse in May 2008.
Dollhouse was produced by 20th Century Fox Television, Whedon's Mutant Enemy Productions, and Dushku's Boston Diva Productions, and was granted an initial thirteen-episode production commitment by Fox, with a reported license fee in the range of $1.5 to 2 million per episode. Fox decided to forego the usual practice of ordering a pilot episode of the series, opting to instead put funds towards the construction of the elaborate set and cultural context of the television series. The set was described as a "life-size Dollhouse". On July 22, 2008, Joss Whedon announced that the first episode shot, "Echo", would be pushed to be the second, saying that this "idea to do a new first episode wasn't the network's. It was mine". Despite several reshoots, "Echo" was later pulled from the run entirely; the staff of the show has since noted, during a panel on the series at the Paley Festival, a television festival held at the Paley Center for Media in New York City, that portions of the episode were used in subsequent episodes throughout the series' first season.
Dollhouse, as well as J. J. Abrams' Fringe, aired during its first season with half the commercials and promo spots of most current network dramas, adding about 6 minutes to the shows' run times, as part of a new Fox initiative called "Remote-Free TV". Fox charged a premium price for this advertising space, but did not completely recoup the money that they spent. Fox later canceled Remote-Free TV.
Originally, Whedon announced he was planning to shoot a separate webisode for every Dollhouse episode produced. The webisodes did not materialize, however. There was originally a five-year plan for the show, with Whedon plotting how its characters would evolve through that point.
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