The Dungeon Crawler Carl live-action series is officially a go at Peacock. Just a couple of months after reports that Peacock was developing a live-action adaptation of the LitRPG books, author Matt Dinniman confirmed that the series has been greenlit.
“I’m happy to announce that our friends at Peacock have *officially* greenlit the Dungeon Crawler Carl television series!,” Dinniman wrote on Instagram. “Me, Chris Yost and Seth MacFarlane and his team at Fuzzy Door are all really excited to get to work.” Dinnaman also noted that he and Yost are scheduled to lead a Dungeon Crawler Carl panel at Comic-Con in July."
As previousy reported, Chris Yost (Thor: Ragnarok) will write and executive produce. Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, Ted, The Orville) is also on board as executive producer through his Fuzzy Door banner. Matt Dinniman is an executive producer as well, alongside Fuzzy Door’s Erica Huggins. Rachel Hargreaves-Heald will serve as executive in charge of production for Fuzzy Door.
As much as many are eagerly anticipating a Dungeon Crawler Carl series, adapting it into live action will be no simple feat. The books, referred to as LitRPGs (literary role-playing game), blend sci-fi storytelling with video game mechanics, including RPG elements like levels, loot, and stats. The series itself is reality TV satire wrapped in a dark comedy survival story, with a logline that reads:
“An alien invasion has wiped out most of humanity and any survivors are forced to fight for their lives on a sadistic intergalactic game show. Sounds bad, right? Now try doing it with bare feet and a stuck-up, self-centered, tiara-wearing talking cat as your partner. Welcome to Dungeon Crawler World: Earth, where the apocalypse will be televised … and Coast Guard vet Carl finds himself stuck with his ex-girlfriend’s award-winning show cat, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, as they try to survive the end of the world, fighting monsters, aliens, an insane A.I. and even other survivors … all for the sake of good TV. Survival is optional. Entertainment is not.”
The intense sci-fi and fantasy aspect of the story has left some fans concerned that it won't translate well to live-action, and that he series may have been better suited for animation. But Dinniman has expressed confidence in MacFarlane, stating previously:
“[We’re] not going to do it if it’s gonna look like absolute sh*t. And they will do CGI testing on Princess Donut and stuff like that. And that’s all I can say, I think. It’s all gonna hinge on what it looks like. But Fuzzy Door, specifically, if you watch ‘Ted’ or ‘The Orville,’ you’ll see that they know what they’re doing when it comes to this.”
There are currently eight books in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The most recent, A Parade of Horribles, just released in May.