Watch the trailer for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse

If there’s anyone who deserves a big break, it’s Joss Whedon. Sure, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly have garnered plenty of acclaim from both fans and critics alike. However, Whedon has also had to deal with a fair amount of being screwed over — just witness the treatment that Firefly and Serenity received at the hands of the studio execs.

So here’s hoping that his latest series, Dollhouse, receives a bit more support from the higher ups. Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku (best known as Faith from Buffy) as Echo, an operative whose mind is wiped and then re-written with completely new personalities and talents for different assignments. As the series progresses, Echo becomes increasingly self-aware and begins questioning what’s going on. Dollhouse also stars Olivia Williams (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense) as the head of the Dollhouse project, Amy Acker (Angel) as one of the project’s doctors, and Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica) as an FBI agent intent on discovering the secrets of the project.

A trailer for the series was posted on the Dollverse.com, but it’s currently offline. So until that’s fixed, we’ll just have to settle for the YouTube version:

There are flashes of that trademark Whedon humor, and I’m sure there will be plenty of deeper ruminations on existence, the nature of the soul, individuality, and so on — but not so much that it’ll get in the way of the show’s entertainment factor. That is, not if Whedon’s earlier series are any indication.

Dollhouse is currently in production, and will begin airing on Fox in January 2009.