# 123 Ken Whitman, Jolly Blackburn & Barbara Blackburn

A few months ago, just prior to GenCon, we at Kenzer and Company were approached by an old friend with an interesting proposal. Ken Whitman (D20 Entertainment ) wanted to do a Knights of the Dinner Table webseries.

Now over the years, Jolly, Dave, Steve, and Brian have been approached perhaps a dozen times about doing such a project. From the guy with a video camera and perhaps more ambition than know-how to a few big name animation studios whose names you would immediately recognize.

As tempting as all those offers were, they came to nothing because of one thing:  The Development Team wanted to make sure they had creative input/control. They just weren’t willing to take a check and put these beloved characters in the hands of strangers (especially when one studio exec insisted on changing the Knight’s background from ‘losers’ (her words) to teens who were “heroes” in their day to day lives outside the game).

Giving up complete creative control is just something they’ve been unwilling to do. Unfortunately, most studios weren’t willing to negotiate on that point. So, as the years have passed, and offers have come and gone, the likelihood of a KODT?film project just seemed to diminish, to the D-Team’s disappointment.  Not only did Ken Whitman agree to the D-Team having creative control on the proposed project, he insisted on it. That got the ball rolling.  John us as we talk with Ken Whitman, Jolly Blackburn and Barbara Blackburn about Knights of the Dinner Table and other projects.