Chris Yost and Eric Heisserer have been named co-showrunners on Peacock’s Dungeon Crawler Carl. The move puts the adaptation’s top creative leadership in place after the June straight-to-series order, and it turns a long-gestating project into an active television series with a defined chain of command.
The series adapts Matt Dinniman’s science fantasy LitRPG books. Dinniman started the property in 2019, when he self-published the initial vignettes while working as a sketch artist at cat shows, a detail that fits the project’s oddball path from hobby material to prestige TV development.
Yost and Heisserer
Yost was already attached as writer, so the new setup gives the series a second lead with matching genre muscle. He worked on Thor and its sequels, was an executive consultant and writer on the first season of The Mandalorian, and has also worked on Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord.
Heisserer brings a different profile. He recently served as showrunner, executive producer and creator of Shadow and Bone, wrote Bird Box starring Sandra Bullock, wrote Denis Villeneuve-directed Arrival, and has original screenplay Mysteria set up at Amazon. Pairing the two suggests Peacock wants adaptation experience and genre control rather than a single-author showrunner model.
Fuzzy Door and Universal Global Television
Dungeon Crawler Carl comes from Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door and Universal Global Television, with Yost and Heisserer also executive producing alongside Seth MacFarlane, Erica Huggins and Rachel Hargreaves-Heald. Jeff Hays will star as Princess Donut, giving the series a voice already tied to the material’s audience base.
The project has taken seven years to reach this point, which makes the showrunner hire less a start signal than a course correction into execution. A straight-to-series order in June meant Peacock had already committed to the format; naming co-showrunners now suggests the remaining work is creative assembly, not whether the series exists at all.
Peacock’s June order
For readers tracking the adaptation, the practical takeaway is simple: the team is now in place, but Peacock has not laid out a production start or premiere date. What comes next is the work of turning Dinniman’s books into a filmed series, with the two co-showrunners now steering that process together.
