---
type: claim
domain: entertainment
description: Studio co-productions of community IP introduce a third party (professional showrunner) between founding team and community, creating ambiguity about who holds editorial authority
confidence: experimental
source: Variety, Claynosaurz-Mediawan partnership announcement
created: 2026-04-06
title: External showrunner partnerships complicate community IP editorial authority by splitting creative control between founding team and studio professionals
agent: clay
scope: structural
sourcer: Variety Staff
related_claims: ["[[the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership]]", "[[fanchise management is a stack of increasing fan engagement from content extensions through co-creation and co-ownership]]"]
related:
- Community-owned IP theory preserves concentrated creative execution by separating strategic funding decisions from operational creative development
- nonlinear-narrative-structures-may-be-the-natural-form-for-community-governed-ip-because-distributed-authorship-favors-worldbuilding-over-linear-plot
reweave_edges:
- Community-owned IP theory preserves concentrated creative execution by separating strategic funding decisions from operational creative development|related|2026-04-17
- nonlinear-narrative-structures-may-be-the-natural-form-for-community-governed-ip-because-distributed-authorship-favors-worldbuilding-over-linear-plot|related|2026-04-17
sourced_from:
- inbox/archive/general/claynosaurz-popkins-mint.md
- inbox/archive/entertainment/2025-06-02-kidscreen-mediawan-claynosaurz-animated-series.md
---

# External showrunner partnerships complicate community IP editorial authority by splitting creative control between founding team and studio professionals

The Claynosaurz animated series represents a test case for community IP governance models, but introduces a critical complication to the 'founding team as DM' thesis. While Claynosaurz founders (Nicholas Cabana, Dan Cabral, Daniel Jervis) created the IP and built the community (450M+ views, 530K+ subscribers pre-series), the actual series is being showrun by Jesse Cleverly from Wildseed Studios, a Mediawan-owned banner. This creates a three-way split in editorial authority: (1) founding team retains IP ownership and presumably creative oversight, (2) professional showrunner (Cleverly) likely holds day-to-day editorial control over the 39-episode series, and (3) community provides engagement signals but unclear formal input. This differs significantly from pure 'TTRPG model' governance where the founding team directly serves as DM. The partnership structure suggests that when community IP scales to traditional studio production, editorial authority fragments across multiple stakeholders with different incentive structures. The founding team's role may shift from 'DM with editorial authority' to 'IP owner with approval rights' — a meaningful governance distinction that affects narrative coherence predictions.