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Marvel and DC should watch out because “Dungeon Crawler Carls” may be the next huge fandom.
Author Matt Dinniman’s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series began as a self-published novel in 2019. The series follows Carl, a Coast Guard veteran who is thrown into a deadly, video game-inspired dungeon when Earth is taken over by aliens. The book series has expanded into eight novels, and Peacock has ordered a live-action adaptation that has readers excited to see the world come to life. Dinniman hosted two panels at San Diego Comic-Con and stopped by the Variety Studio, presented by Google TV, to ensure fans that he’s listening to their hopes for the show as it gets underway.
“There’s a lot of hesitation around the show, which is obvious,” Dinniman said. “Anytime there’s an adaptation of anything, fans of it are hesitant to embrace it right away because they’ve been disappointed so many times before. It was important for us to show everyone that we’ve been listening to their comments.”
Fans got their first wish granted when Dinniman announced that Jeff Hays, the narrator of the popular “Dungeon Crawler Carl” audiobooks, would be voicing Princess Donut, a talking cat who’s one of the main characters in the series. In the books, aliens turn Earth into a worldwide game show, with levels filled with dangerous monsters and traps. Carl is joined by other players (known as crawlers) and his cat Princess Donut, who gains the ability to talk once they enter the dungeon. They must use spells, traps and everything at their disposal to fight their way through each floor and get one step closer to freeing themselves from the dungeon.
The “Dungeon Crawler Carl” books have sold more than 10 million copies and are beloved by fans for their humor, fantasy and sci-fi tones and literary role-playing game (“LitRPG”) storytelling. Meanwhile, the audiobooks, which Hays narrates with more than 200 distinct voices, have also proved to be extremely popular among listeners. Announcing Hays as the voice of Donut signaled to fans that Dinniman and the Peacock team are taking the live-action “Dungeon Crawler Carl” seriously.
“Jeff has been doing the voice of Donut for six years now,” Dinniman said. “We’re trying to show the fans that we are listening, and we’re doing our best to stay as true to the story as possible.”
The audition process was easy for Hays, considering he’s logged more than 150 hours voicing Donut and every other “Dungeon Crawler Carl” character.”
“You could consider the audiobooks the audition, couldn’t you?” Hays said. “When my agent asked me to send something in, I sent in a video. I livestream myself narrating all the time, and so my team has put together highlight videos over the years, and so I just sent in one of those.”
The book series currently stands at eight published novels, with two final entries on the way. Dinniman said he plans to finish writing the series before the live-action show premieres. He serves as an executive producer on it alongside Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door studio and Universal Global Television.
“When we first sold the option for ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl,’ there were multiple different entities that were interested, and we ended up ultimately going with Universal,” Dinniman said. “The second that happened, they said, ‘Well, we have a team that’s really interested in working directly on the show,’ and it was the Fuzzy Door team. I met them, and they were all enthusiastic. Everyone I talked to had read the book, and they were clearly the best choice. We get along very well. We share the same vision for what we want to create, and I can’t wait to get working with them.”
With the Peacock show ordered just last month, there haven’t been many details revealed, and Dinniman has to keep his lips sealed on any plans. That hasn’t stopped actors who are fans of the books from throwing their hats into the ring for consideration, like MacFarlane’s friend and collaborator Seth Green. He made a pitch to play Mordecai, an alien mentor for Carl in the books.
“There are so many people I’d love to have on the show, but I’m not allowed to say anything,” Dinniman said.
Along with the original self-published work, the book series (which has since been traditionally published) includes “Carl’s Doomsday Scenario” (2021), “The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook” (2021), “The Gate of the Feral Gods” (2021), “The Butcher’s Masquerade” (2022), “The Eye of the Bedlam Bride” (2023), “This Inevitable Ruin” (2024) and “A Parade of Horribles” (2026). Dinniman has already announced he’s splitting the final entry of the series into two parts to wrap everything up.
“I don’t know what the schedule is for the show, but I know what my schedule is for writing, and I am full steam ahead,” he said. “I anticipate being done with Book 9 and probably a good chunk of Book 10 relatively quickly. And as far as book people are concerned, it’s still like a year out for me. But the show won’t be out a year from right now.”
It may take a bit more time to get the “Dungeon Crawler Carl” show, but Dinniman envisions even more for the franchise as it starts to take off.
“There’s so much I want to tackle,” he said. “All this stuff seems to be happening at once because we started doing it all at once. I would love for there to be a full-on video game. There’s nothing imminent for that. We’ve been definitely talking, so maybe one day we’ll have a cool game. I would love to have an MMORPG, like a ‘Fallout’-style game, in the ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ universe. That’d be badass.”
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