Dungeon Crawler Carl: A Surprise Announcement at SDCC 2026

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“Cats are assholes. I get it. But do you know why people like cats, despite their asshole-ness? It’s because they don’t fucking talk. If they did, and they were all like you, they’d all be extinct because we’d have killed you all by now.” -Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Well, Carl, I hate to say this, but you couldn’t be more wrong.

At the Audible: Goddamnit, Donut: A Totally Professional Panel with Matt Dinniman and Jeff Hays at San Diego Comic Con 2026, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk was the star of the show. While there was lots of talk about Matt’s writing process, his dislike of happy endings, and his intention for the TV series adaptation, the announcement of Jeff Hays, the voice behind Audible’s Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook series, as the official voice of Prince Donut in the upcoming Dungeon Crawler Carl show on Peacock was the highlight of the panel.

And, of course, there were also some hints on what might be in store for us in Book 9, so let’s get into it.

The voice behind Princess Donut

Despite the fact that Carl himself thinks that the world would have killed off cats if they could talk like Princess Donut, she is probably the most beloved character in the series. So, it really is a no-brainer to cast the voice that brought her to life as her official voice in the upcoming show.

In an interview with Variety Studio after the panel, Matt Dinniman tells us that there have been a lot of hesitations concerning announcing information about the show, due to the naturally occurring skepticisms of fans when books get adapted into TV shows and movies, but the casting of Jeff Hays was really important to him to share with the fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl. He wants to show fans that he and the team over at Peacock are listening and that their intention is to stay as true to the story as possible.

Jeff Hays is only the natural choice for Princess Donut, as he has been her voice for over six years now with the Audible series.

During the panel, Chris Yost, the executive producer of the Dungeon Crawler Carl show, tries to dig into Jeff’s process of creating Princess Donut’s voice, especially since it has resonated so much with the Dungeon Crawler Carl community. He asks if Jeff and Matt ever got together to discuss what Matt wanted from his portrayal of the character and how that impacted the final results. While Jeff says Princess Donut was highly intuitive for him, Matt gives us a bit more information on what their original conversation about her looked like.

Matt says, “I think I said, you know, she’s imperious, she’s going to act like this way, but she’s going to change a little bit throughout the book, and I think you nailed it almost right away.”

And Jeff has something similar to say when asked if his approach to Princess Donut has changed throughout the course of the series. He says, “I don’t think so … I feel like Matt kind of hit the nail on the head immediately with this character and she was just birthed fully formed.”

They are a match made in heaven, the perfect team to bring this amazing series to life in all of its forms.

But the most important question of all is, of course, how full dive does Matt think Jeff will go in the show? To which the answer is simple, Jeff has been a diva this whole time, so the role was most definitely made for him. And while this is a fun little question meant for some laughs, it gives Matt the opportunity to talk about how happy he is that the voice Jeff gave Princess Donut is so well received and now it is set in stone. He will forever be the voice of Princess Donut and no one else could ever play her.

A “realistic” ending for Dungeon Crawler Carl

With only two books left in the series, everyone has started wondering what characters are going to be left standing at the end. And, honestly, maybe we should be afraid, considering Matt told a fan that “it’s just a book” (albeit with a smile on his face) when she asked if he ever felt bad about killing off his characters. But it is a known fact that characters are never safe with Matt. Not because he likes killing them off, but because he prefers a realistic ending over a happy one.

But it’s really no use asking him anyways. He doesn’t even know how it ends.

Over the course of the panel, Matt shared a lot about his writing process. Matt is what people in the writing business called a “pantser,” which means he prefers to write by flying by the seat of his pants instead of making a plan. There’s never a plan, he says. He writes out of order and oftentimes writes the big, amazing, show-stopping scenes and backtracks in order to make them happen.

And while this sounds a little insane, it’s the only reason why the Patreon polls are able to happen.

If you aren’t a subscriber to Matt’s Patreon then you might not know this, but he will sometimes put polls up on Patreon which allow his subscribers to act like the intergalactic audience in Dungeon Crawler Carl. Through the polls, they are able to vote for specific things to happen in the book. Now, this doesn’t include anything Carl or Donut does or says, but it does include the items that are thrown on them that can change the course of the story.

Which, again, sounds absolutely insane, that he would leave potentially plot-altering choices to the whims of his subscribers. But that’s his favorite part of writing, he says. Letting the plot back him into a corner and finding a way to make the impossible happen.

And one of the ways he does this is by writing through these impossible scenes over and over again, each time with a different character dying so he can see what the other characters would do. How they would react. How they would be pushed to fight harder. And that is almost always the key to how his characters are continuously able to get out of impossible situations.

So, to get back to my earlier point, I suppose we should be afraid of who Matt will decide to kill off, because apparently he writes their deaths all the time. But, he does leave us with some words that should ease our fears at least a little bit, which is that he doesn’t dislike happy endings, despite what everyone thinks. It’s just that happy endings aren’t always realistic.

“It’s going to be up to Carl in order to set the circumstances up for there to be a happy ending,” he says. So all you Patreon subscribers better be nice to Carl when answering those polls, because who knows what could change the course of the story next, for better or for worse.

Especially when Matt has confirmed he has a whole list of things that are due to bite Carl and the crew in the ass in Book 9, it is good to know there is hope for them. And, sometimes, that’s all that matters.

Passion for the craft

With all of the hype surrounding the upcoming show and Book 9, I think it is important to take the time to share how grateful Matt is for his fans and the opportunity he has been given to share Carl’s story with the world.

It has been a crazy journey for him, as someone who is a naturally shy and introverted person. Things like this used to be very hard for him, going to shows and talking to people, and now he savors every experience of fans coming up to him and asking him to sign their underwear, which better be white boxers with red hearts on them. And while it has certainly done a lot for him, it has also touched the lives of so many other people, too.

Matt says that it is incredibly humbling for people to tell him that his work has changed people’s lives, that his books have been a beacon of light for people during dark times in their lives. He tells Chris, “it makes me feel so happy to realize that something as silly as Dungeon Crawler Carl has really affected people.”

Because it’s really not a silly book. Well, yes, it is, but it has so much more depth to it then you’d expect a book about a Coast Guard veteran and his ex-girlfriend’s talking cat trying to survive a Dungeons & Dragons, video game-like dungeon to have. Like, seriously, I cried over goblins when reading the first book.

This is one of those instances that feels like we made the right person famous.

And in terms of doing his best to keep the TV show faithful to the books, Matt said that he only wanted to work with people who really love the material, which is why he went with Fuzzy Door. Everyone Matt spoke to at Fuzzy Door had read the books and shared the same vision of them that Matt wants to create. This is a team that is committed to the story that Dungeon Crawler Carl is trying to tell and wants to share it with as many people as possible.

If you want to stay updated on news about the show or the next book in series, I recommend following Matt’s instagram, as he posts pretty frequently there, and/or subscribing to his patreon for even more content. Or if you want a hand in deciding Carl and Princess Donut’s fate. That could be fun, too.