As has been rumored for some time, author Rick Riordan has taken to Twitter to confirm that a television adaptation of his book series Percy Jackson is in the works for the Disney+ streaming platform. Riordan and his wife Becky made the announcement official, telling the world: “After a lot of hard work and a lot of support from you guys, Percy Jackson is coming to Disney+!” It’s unclear who will be involved on the creative side of the series, but this is an exciting development for fans of the young-adult book series that have been eager to see it faithfully adapted in live-action. In a follow-up statement, Riordan teased that the series could run for five seasons, each adapting one of the original books.
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“For the past decade, you’ve worked hard to champion a faithful on-screen adaptation of Percy Jackson’s world. Some of you have even suggested it would be a great series for Disney+. We couldn’t agree more! We can’t say much more at this stage but we are very excited about the idea of a live-action series of the highest quality, following the storyline of the original Percy Jackson five-book series, starting with The Lightning Thief in season one. Rest assured that Becky and I will be involved in person in every aspect of the show. There will be much more news in the future, but for now, we have a lot of work to do! Buckle up, demigods. It’s going to be a fantastic exciting ride!”
First published in 2005, the first novel, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, introducing fans to the titular character and his world that was infused with Greek mythology. It has previously been adapted into a feature film in 2010 with Logan Lerman in the title role. A sequel was produced three years later, but both movies were frequently derided by fans as being too different from the source material.
The rights to Percy Jackson are quite tricky and were made slightly less complicated by the Disney acquisition of 20th Century Fox. Despite Disney being the publisher of the books through their Disney-Hyperion label, they passed on the film rights in the early 2000s which were then bought by Fox. After acquiring the company, Disney gained the adaptation rights back, and have clearly had their eye on doing something with it.
Luckily for Disney, should the show prove popular, they’ll have a lot of material from which they can mine content. As stated above, the Percy Jackson & the Olympians book series ran for five books total but also saw a short-story companion book released and a sequel series titled The Heroes of Olympus. Yet another book series, The Trials of Apollo, has also been released by Riordan, which could no doubt be a spin-off in its own right on Disney+.
