Denis and Me

Did You Know?

• The French dubbing of the show, Denis et moi, formerly aired on Télémagino from July 31, 2021.
• In Japan, the series airs on Disney Channel.

Premise

The series follows the misadventures of Denis, a teenager who is a fictionalised version of Kopotun, and his best friend and pet cat Sir Meows A Lot. Denis is the optimistic straight man oblivious to Sir Meows A Lot's evil schemes, such as cloning Denis or plotting world domination. Episodes usually end with Denis receiving the impact of the cat's plots. Recurring characters include Lady Barks A Bit, a Shiba Inu rival of Sir Meows A Lot.

Development

Kopotun started his YouTube channel in 2016 with comedic gaming videos centered on Roblox and Minecraft, featuring a plush cat named Sir Meows A Lot based on a Roblox accessory. The show began development in 2018, with Diana Moore as showrunner and executive producers Michelle Melanson, Ken Cuperus, and Moore. Announced in September 2018 as a development deal between Kopotun and Headspinner Productions under the working title DENIS and Me, it targeted a 6–9 age demographic.

Production started in mid-2020 with financing from the Canada Media Fund and the Shaw Rocket Fund. The series debuted that fall on Crave and YouTube. Season 1 launched in December 2020 on YouTube, amassing over 320,000 subscribers and 20 million views. Kopotun publicly announced it on his channel on July 7, 2020.

The first 9 episodes were budgeted at US$374,612, with the Canada Media Fund providing US$16,790 and Bell Media offering around 10 percent of that total. 75 percent of the budget came from the Shaw Rocket Fund's Kids Digital Animated Series program, with producer investment and tax credits covering the remainder. Cartoon Conrad animated the visuals, and Kopotun voiced all characters. The first season had 10 three-minute episodes; the second had 20 three-minute episodes.

In May 2021, WildBrain and Headspinner Productions announced a second season commissioned by Family Channel, which also picked up the first season for broadcast. WildBrain took on global distribution and YouTube channel management. The show reached its second season by 2022, with four 11-minute specials beginning in February 2022. The YouTube channel had nearly 400,000 subscribers and over 22 million views across the first two seasons. A merchandise line launched. Season 3 has had 5 11-minute episodes produced.

Episodes

The show spans three seasons and 35 episodes. Its first season consisted of 10 episodes released daily from November 28 to December 6. The second season had 20 episodes, including two split into two parts, with five episodes debuting in October and December 2021. Four additional 11-minute episodes have since aired sporadically. The popular episode "Lemonade Stand-Off" drew from creator Kopotun's childhood lemonade-stand experiences.

Denis Kopotun

Denis Kopotun, born June 5, 1996, goes by DenisDaily or just Denis online. He is a Canadian content creator based in Vancouver, British Columbia, who makes Roblox and Minecraft gameplay videos and created the series Denis and Me. Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 Social Media list in 2023. Kopotun was born in Edmonton.

When he was three, his family moved to Nashville, but they returned to Canada the next year after his father became a math professor at the University of Manitoba. His parents, who are of Ukrainian descent, immigrated from Ukraine and raised him and his older brother Nikita speaking both Russian and English. As a child, he trained seriously as a competitive ballet dancer until tendonitis in his knee stopped him at age 17. He says that training gave him the discipline and work ethic he later used in his career.

He started posting videos at age 11, beginning with claymation stop-motion. At 17, he told his brother he wanted to quit school to stream Roblox full-time. He briefly enrolled at the University of British Columbia Okanagan but dropped out. By 2023, his YouTube channel had over 9 million subscribers.

As of 2022, he had posted roughly 5,000 videos, with his most popular one reaching 30 million views. He created a Roblox YouTuber group called The Pals with friends Sketch, AlexCrafted, SubZeroExtabyte, and CorlHorl, but it disbanded in 2019 after a social media controversy involving Corl. On December 16, 2023, in a video titled "My Next Chapter," Kopotun announced he was leaving content creation to focus on Roblox game development. He has not uploaded since.