Percy Jackson: Rick Riordan Reveals How Walker Scobell Helped Series Overcome Adaptation Challenges

The long wait for Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians is almost over. The serialized live-action adaptation of Rick Riordan’s best-selling novels wrapped filming earlier this month and now embarks on its final production step ahead of an anticipated 2024 release. This culminates a near half-decade journey, as whispers of a Percy Jackson reboot first began when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox. Just one year after that acquisition, Riordan revealed that a Disney+ adaptation of his world of demigods and monsters was indeed in development, and would remain in deep pre-production preparations for over two years.

Things were officially set in motion in Spring 2022 when Riordan and company announced the casting of Walker Scobell (The Adam Project) as the show’s titular star. In the year since Scobell was first notified of his new gig, the young star has completed production on Percy Jackson Season 1, impressing Riordan in his picture-perfect portrayal of the son of Poseidon.

“Walker’s Percy is just totally spot-on,” Riordan told EW. “I mean, it’s really hard to take a book that is told 100 percent from a first-person narrator and translate it to film. I guess you could have a voice-over narrative, [but] it’s not the same. We have to figure out how to convey Percy’s personality in other ways, through his lines of dialogue, through his expressions, through his actions. Walker has that sense of alchemy. Everybody says this about him when they watch him perform: This kid is a superstar. The screen loves him, and he is so good and so natural and so dedicated at everything. It really is stunning, and he’s a huge megafan of the books.”

That fandom is no hyperbole either, as Riordan revealed that Scobell has already dove into the upcoming Nico di Angelo-centered spin-off book, The Sun and the Star, which is being released this May.

“I kid you not, he’s read the books more times than I have,” Riordan continued. “So he’s prereading The Sun and the Star right now. He could not wait. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll get you an advanced copy, but you have got to keep it to yourself.’ That love of the series and the source material really comes through.”

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is currently in post-production.