Peacock has greenlit Dungeon Crawler Carl for a series

That was fast: a little over two months after word broke that Peacock was developing a live-action adaptation of Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl series, it's now official: Peacock has greenlit the project in a straight-to-series order.

Dinniman revealed the news in a social media post, noting that he and the team were excited about the project, and that he and writer Chris Yost will likely reveal some more details about it at this year's San Diego Comic Con. The series will be produced through Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door and Universal Global Television and written by Yost (Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, The Mandalorian, Cowboy Bebop, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, and others). Dinniman will also be involved as a co-executive producer.

If you've not come across the series: it's comprised of eight novels: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Carl's Doomsday Scenario, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, The Gate of the Feral Gods, The Butcher's Masquerade, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, This Inevitable Ruin, and A Parade of Horribles, which are set after an apocalyptic alien invasion destroys Earth and converts what remains into a series of deadly dungeons that the few million human survivors are shepherded into and forced to compete in a sadistic galaxy-wide reality TV series called Dungeon Crawler World.

The novels follow Coast Guard veteran named Carl and his ex-girlfriend's tortoiseshell Persian show cat Grand Champion, Breed Winner Regional, National Winner Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk (Princess Donut) as they fight to survive each successive level, while also fighting against the system that they're trapped in.

They're a good amount of fun: they're irreverent and goofy, but also pretty heart-felt – a little like the TV series M*A*S*H, where there's a lot of humor mixed in between the darker and emotional moments. Dinniman initially self-published the novels in serial form before moving them over to Amazon and an impressive audiobook edition narrated by Jeff Hayes. In 2024, he signed a print-only deal with ACE books, and they've since shot up the bestseller lists, and their popularity doesn't seem to be waning anytime soon.

Dinniman's steadily expanded the series title to a variety of other mediums this year: Vault Comics released a graphic novel adaptation in May, while Renegade Studios just concluded a massive crowdfunding campaign that pulled in more than $13 million from 55,000 backers for an RPG edition.

A television series adaptation is another big swing for Dinniman and the title: since its release, it's amassed an enormous fanbase around it. Expectations for any adaptation will be sky-high, not only because the books are big, loud, and full of weird creatures and locations, but also because readers and listeners have such a clear vision for the characters in their heads: it'll be interesting to see how they handle casting the various characters (in my view, if you want to do it right, just cast Jeff Hayes as Princess Donut, because his narration and voice for her is already perfect – no notes.)

Straight-to-series means that the studio has a good amount of confidence in it and is ready to get it headed to production. That's not a guarantee that it'll happen – recall the recent news about Amazon's Stargate revival – but it's a good step along the way to seeing these characters jump from the book to live action.