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When Matt Dinniman confirmed that his hit LitRPG series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, was going to be turned into a live-action TV show, many fans were worried. Not because more people would be exposed to the dark, wonderful world of Carl and Donut and the post-apocalyptic gameshow they find themselves in, but because many fans aren’t convinced the books work with live-action. Matt Dinniman has the same fears, and he assures fans he isn’t going to let Dungeon Crawler Carl “look like absolute shit.”

Those are his exact words, actually. During a recent interview, Matt Dinniman acknowledged that it is a risk to turn Dungeon Crawler Carl into a live-action show rather than an animated one. Among all the over-the-top weirdness of the books, one of the main characters is a talking cat. There is always a chance that Donut would end up looking a bit silly at best and creepy at worst.

“It’s kind of funny,” he said. “A lot of the more hardcore nerdy fans – I mean, like I am – will say, we want it animated. And then I think actually the majority of people who aren’t into animation are going to say we want a live-action. If you actually poll people out on the street, it’s going to be a pretty high number of live-action. But that’s really high risk, high reward, because we’re not going to do it if it’s gonna look like absolute shit. And they will do CGI testing on Princess Donut and stuff like that. And that’s all I can say, I think. It’s all gonna hinge on what it looks like.”

Dinniman knows we’re all worried about what Dungeon Crawler Carl is going to look like in live-action, but he wants to swing for the fences and try something unexpected. And, honestly, we respect the ambition.

Just like yourself, the Popverse staff spends a whole lot of time with our respective noses in respective books. It's why we've come up with stuff like:

• The hottest upcoming fiction
• Queer romance to add to your reading list
• A genre fiction literary column called If It Bleeds, We Read

...and a whole lot more. Join our metaphorical library, won't you? There are no late fees and you can be as loud as you want, so long as the people you live with are OK with it.