The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi Adaptation of the Decade Officially Casts Its First Major Star

Image via Renegade Game Studios / Luciano Fleitas Published Jul 23, 2026, 7:00 PM EDT Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys. Sign in to your Collider account This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.In the sci-fi literary world, no singular series has gotten as much buzz of late as Matt Dinniman's wild post-apocalyptic litRPG smash Dungeon Crawler Carl. Consisting of eight books and counting since 2020, its fanbase has rapidly grown from small and passionate to global, particularly over the past year and a half, reaching over 10 million copies sold already between all installments. All the excitement for this unconventional televised game show armageddon quickly spurred the development of a television series, with Peacock swiftly ordering it and Seth MacFarlane producing through his Fuzzy Door banner. This whirlwind of exciting developments has made Dinniman's San Diego Comic-Con spotlight panel one to look forward to at the annual convention. The bestselling author sat down with Christopher Yost, who is penning the series adaptation, for the panel to talk about his journey as a writer and how he wound up writing the wildly successful story of a former lifeguard turned boxer-wearing dungeon-crawling badass with a spoiled talking cat as his partner. During their conversation, however, they inevitably turned to the upcoming Peacock show and the cast. To this point, no names have been attached to bring the series to life in live-action, but that has now changed with an addition that will make fans of the DCC audiobooks very happy. Jeff Hays has officially boarded the production and will not just be narrating events this time, but will act as the voice of Carl's beloved partner in the crawl, Princess Donut. Network Peacock Writers Chris Yost