Ever since its announcement, fans have been waiting with bated breath for more updates on Peacock’s live-action adaptation of Dungeon Crawler Carl. The fantasy sci-fi LitRPG series of novels by Matt Dinniman has exploded in popularity over the past few years, selling over 14 million copies across the eight existing books, with two more on the way to close out Carl and Princess Donut’s tale of survival. So far, the streamer and the creative team of Christopher Yost, Eric Heisserer, and producer Seth MacFarlane have shown they’re listening to the fanbase following the casting of the franchise’s omni-voiced audiobook narrator, Jeff Hays, as the beloved talking cat Donut. Since then, though, the other crawlers, NPCs, and members of the Borant Corporation have yet to be announced.
Casting Hays was easy enough, considering the demand for him to reprise his duties as the vain show-winning Persian. However, finding the right fit for Carl, the System AI, their first party member Katia, and Donut’s manager Mordecai, and more in live-action is a greater undertaking. The team has felt the pressure to deliver on the love for the books, but that takes time. Though Universal International Studios has held the rights to DCC with McFarlane’s Fuzzy Door banner since 2024, active development has only been underway since April, and Heisserer was only just brought aboard as a co-showrunner back in August. Dinniman confirmed that it’s still a little too early in the process to start filling out the inhabitants of the World Dungeon.
In an interview with Collider’s Maggie Lovitt at New York Comic Con, the author said that there currently aren’t any casting decisions that audiences don’t already know about. “As of right now, the only thing that’s been cast, both publicly and behind the scenes, is Jeff as Princess Donut.” More announcements aren’t likely to come until more of the writing is finalized and the creative team is rounded out. DCC critically still needs a casting director, among other things, and Dinniman isn’t entirely certain how long the process will take. He told Collider:
“I don’t know. I’ve never worked in television. I know that they’re looking at casting directors and production designers and all that stuff, but we haven’t actually gotten to the place. I think they’re waiting for the scripts to be more done before they actually start casting, so I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know when.”
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Seeing DCC get so popular to the point that it’s already getting such an ambitious live-action series adaptation has been wild for Dinniman to watch. “Oh, it’s insane!” he continued. “It’s strange, it’s humbling.” Lending the series out to other creators has required a lot of trust in them to fully understand and gel with his vision. After all, this is a book series defined by chaos, beginning with an alien invasion to strip Earth of its resources and tossing the few survivors into a dementedly constructed tabletop RPG-inspired dungeon crawl for intergalactic entertainment. Its stars are also a man with no pants or shoes, donning heart-print boxers, and a talking show cat who becomes a “mother” to a velociraptor.
Dinniman admits it’s been hard to take his hands off this zany world, but adapting DCC into other mediums has already prepared him somewhat for the transition to television, and it certainly helps to have a team under Peacock that he feels great about taking the apocalypse to a new audience. He explained:
“I’m fortunate that I can see it being done via comics. Via the board game or the TTRPG game, the tabletop game, and seeing what other people do with it and learning how you have to give up some creative control. I mean, I’m a mess in real life, but I’m, like, super micro-managey when it comes to my books, and seeing other people playing in that playground is a learning experience. But I’m really happy with the people who are working on it, and they’re very true to the tone of the story, so I can’t wait to see what comes out of this.”
Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the Dungeon Crawler Carl live-action adaptation and the future of the series in general as more news comes out.
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