Dungeon Crawler Carl series starts to take shape

Peacock's Dungeon Crawler Carl adaptation has added another person behind the controls.

Eric Heisserer has joined the upcoming live-action series as co-showrunner and executive producer alongside Chris Yost, who was already attached to write and run the adaptation. Heisserer is probably a familiar name to horror fans as the writer of Final Destination 5, Lights Out, and Bird Box, but his resume stretches well beyond horror. He also wrote Arrival, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

If Dungeon Crawler Carl is completely new to you, Matt Dinniman's book series follows Coast Guard veteran Carl after an alien invasion wipes out most of humanity and turns the survivors into contestants on a deadly intergalactic game show. Carl enters an enormous dungeon filled with monsters, traps, an unstable A.I., and other survivors while accompanied by his ex-girlfriend's award-winning show cat, Princess Donut. Donut can talk, use magic, and has enough personality to make you wonder which one of them is actually the main character.

The books mix science fiction, fantasy, horror, role-playing game mechanics, violence, and a lot of comedy without completely losing the human story underneath everything. That strange balance is also what makes Heisserer an interesting choice. Final Destination 5 showed he can have fun with elaborate death and horror, while Arrival proved he can handle much heavier science fiction without losing sight of the characters. Dungeon Crawler Carl is going to need a little bit of both.

Heisserer will work alongside Yost, whose credits include Thor: Ragnarok and The Mandalorian. Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door and Universal Global Television are producing, with MacFarlane, Erica Huggins, Rachel Hargreaves-Heald, Yost, and Heisserer serving as executive producers. Dinniman is involved as a co-executive producer. Peacock gave the project a straight-to-series order in June, so this has already moved beyond the stage of everyone saying they would really like to make it someday.

There is also one casting decision that should make audiobook fans very happy. Jeff Hays, whose narration has become a huge part of Dungeon Crawler Carl's success, will provide the voice of Princess Donut in the live-action series. His audiobooks have racked up more than one hundred forty million listening hours.

There is still no premiere date, and most of the major casting remains under wraps. What Peacock does have is a straight-to-series commitment, the original author involved, Princess Donut's voice intact, Seth MacFarlane producing, and now Chris Yost and Eric Heisserer running the show.