The Only Evidence of the Lost Live-Action ‘Dilbert’ Show Is Straight Nightmare Fuel
Has there ever been a more cursed comic strip than Dilbert? It started out as a drab time-waster for 9-to-5ers, and eventually became a crudely-drawn forum for its creator Scott Adams’ unabashed bigotry.
Even Diblert’s attempts to launch food tie-ins were hopelessly doomed, lest we forget about the “Diberito,” which attempted to cram an “entire recommended daily allowance” of vitamins into a single burrito, resulting in a foul-tasting fart factory that cost Adams “several million dollars.”
But one failed Dilbert endeavor that we know very little about is the live-action TV adaptation from the ‘90s. No, not The Drew Carey Show.
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As of writing, no footage of the original Dilbert pilot has ever surfaced (possibly because the only copy was cast into the fires of Mount Doom). The live-action version actually preceded the animated show that lasted for two years on UPN.
According to a 1999 article in The Chicago Tribune, the live-action Dilbert pilot was “filmed for the Fox network,” but it didn’t, as Adams put it, “live up to its highest potential.” Adams argued that the biggest problem with the show was that Dilbert himself was just too damn sexy. Fox wanted “to make Dilbert good looking,” Adams complained. “He was given stylish glasses. They ended up casting someone who could have played a (romantic) leading man.”
Another bizarre choice: The makers of the show decided to build an animatronic dog that could stand on its hind legs to bring Dilbert’s talking canine pal “Dogbert” to life. Adams said of the puppet, “I think they spent upwards of $20, $25 on it, and it looked every bit of it.”
So basically, they put as much effort into building Dogbert as Adams did into naming him.
While there are no surviving copies of the pilot, as Wyatt Duncan recently pointed out on social media, there is one lone piece of physical evidence that this project existed: the Dogbert prop. (Side note: Don’t look at these photos if you intend on sleeping soundly ever again).
The source of these monstrous images is the PBS series Nightmare Theatre. In one 2022 episode, the hosts chatted with a curator from the Merrill Movie Museum, who brought with him the Dogbert prop. Up until that point, it had never been seen on television. “This is a world exclusive here,” host Mike Ensley proclaimed, “(and) I don’t know that we should be proud of it.”
At the risk of creeping out their audience further, the hosts examined the inner workings of the dead-eyed canine, prompting Ensley to joke that Dogbert will “haunt my dreams.”
Thankfully, we never have to see this thing in action because there are no tapes of the Dilbert pilot. And if you ever find one, maybe you should leave it be, just in case it causes you to suffer a gruesome death within seven days of watching it.
