With Peacock signing on to make a Dungeon Crawler Carl streaming series, it has Matt Dinniman fans excited, but also a little worried about what is coming down the line. The franchise on which the series is based includes eight novels that Dinniman wrote and self-published, and Ace Books has since acquired the physical print rights. In 2024, Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions acquired the rights to adapt it into a TV series, and after Christopher Yost (The Mandalorian) wrote a few of the episodes, Peacock stepped up to stream the series. Audiobook narrator Jeff Hays then signed on to voice Princess Donut, and the development is ramping up.
While this all sounds promising, there are several things that the show needs to get right, other than casting, for it to work. Peacock has a spotty record, cancelling Vampire Academy after just one season, although Twisted Metal has been a success, with two seasons and a third on the way. Dungeon Crawler Carl fans have to hope this works because the story only gets better as the books roll on.
There are negative reviews out there of Dungeon Crawler Carl from readers who didn’t understand the social issues that Dinniman was detailing in his books. The first book alone had the first monster that Carl had to fight and kill being a large Spanish-speaking hoarder monster, and that brought a lot of critics out against the story. However, the point of this is important to understand, and the series can’t trust the viewers as much as Dinniman trusts his readers. Before the creature dies, she delivers some lines in Spanish, and Dinniman doesn’t bother to translate.
However, for those who looked up the lines, the creature was saying she never meant to be a bad person, didn’t want her daughter to get sick, and doesn’t want to end up in Hell. This is a huge plot point. The monsters are ones that the corporation running the games creates in order to show the universe how depraved Earth is. They take minorities and make them look horrible, using the worst stereotypes possible, and Carl understands this better as he gets deeper into the dungeon. These monsters and aliens are not the real villains, because the corporation is lying and deceiving them as well. The rich and powerful use the poor and disenfranchised for entertainment. The Dungeon Crawler Carl series needs to really make this clear to the viewers.
The CGI has to be on point in this series because a large number of characters are not human. These monsters, aliens, and creatures can’t look ridiculous because if they do, this show will die after just one season. Princess Donut can’t be a real cat because she is a Crawler and fighter throughout the series. Furthermore, characters like Mordecai, Odette, The Maestro, and Zev have to look as realistic as possible so viewers can buy into them as characters and not CGI abominations. If they use practical effects for Odette and The Maestro, which they should to save money, it still has to look right.
According to Variety, Dinniman said that he chose MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door because he needed someone he could trust to make the CGI elements look right. This was especially important for Princess Donut since she is one of the two lead characters of the series. Dinniman pointed to shows like The Orville and Ted as proof that MacFarlane’s company could pull this off. This is even more important than the voice actor casting because it doesn’t matter if the show pulls in names like Jeff Hays if the character he voices looks bad.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is from the LitRPG genre, and this relies heavily on gaming knowledge. However, there is a reason that this specific book series has broken out among all the other authors who write in the genre. Dinniman uses a lot of the tropes from the genre, but he also has a strong grip on humor in his series. While Dinniman has admitted that he never meant for the books to be funny, he just can’t seem to help adding in moments of dark humor that make the books sing.
The Dungeon Crawler Carl Peacock series has to maintain this dark humor. There are plenty of shows with warriors fighting monsters, and what can really help this one stand out is to ensure that it makes viewers laugh as much as they get grossed out when the battles with creepy-crawly monsters start. Carl is a man who runs around in boxer shorts with hearts on them and is barefoot while an AI seems to have a foot fetish. He fights a Dude Bro monster in a gym at one point in the first book. This series has to be funny, and if it can make viewers laugh as much as they cheer on Carl and Princess Donut, Dungeon Crawler Carl can be a massive crossover hit for Peacock.
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