Achievement Unlocked: Showrunner Scraps Two Hollywood Writers For You, Achievement: Writers Who Vaguely.
Look, you barely scraped through this news cycle, and you still got the headline wrong. The showrunners were not scrapped. They were hired. Two of them. For the Dungeon Crawler Carl television adaptation. You know, the one that actually has a chance of not being a disaster? We covered the audiobook narrator's take on why Princess Donut is more than a joke in Audiobook Narrator Explains Why Princess Donut Is More Than a Joke, and we also reported on Jeff Hays being cast to voice her after fan demand in Jeff Hays to Voice Princess Donut in Show After Fan Demand. Now we get to talk about who is actually running the show, and the answer is: two guys with Star Wars and Netflix fantasy credits.
Our take is simple. This is good news, and you should be cautiously optimistic until you are not. The showrunners are not the problem yet. The problem is that Hollywood has a long history of taking a weird, profane, cat-driven dungeon crawl and sanding off every edge until it is a generic fantasy show with a talking cat. The two writers in question have credits on things like The Witcher and Star Wars projects, which means they know how to handle big IP, but they also know how to handle IP that gets rewritten into mush. We are watching. We are always watching. This is an unofficial fan site, and we have no loyalty to Peacock or anyone else.
What does this mean for you, the reader who has already pre-ordered the Book Six review we ran under Book Six Review: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride Barely Worth Your Time? It means the show is moving forward with actual names attached, which is more than we had last month. But it also means the pressure is on. The casting of Jeff Hays as Princess Donut was a smart, fan-service move that proved the producers are listening. Hiring showrunners with proven genre experience is another smart move. But smart moves do not guarantee a good show. They guarantee a show that has a budget and a plan. The rest is execution.
One concrete thing to watch: whether these showrunners stick to the tone of the books or try to make it palatable for people who have never read them. The books are not palatable. They are about a man and his cat killing gods in a collapsing dungeon while a sadistic AI narrates. If the showrunners sand that down, the show is dead. If they lean into it, we might get something worth watching. The clock is ticking.