Rick Riordan Compares The Collaborative Process of Recent Percy Jackson Projects (Exclusive)
Rick Riordan's world of demigods and monsters is back in the limelight. The Percy Jackson IP has had a new lease on life since Spring 2020 when it was announced that Disney+ would be delivering a serialized adaptation of the original pentalogy. Percy Jackson and the Olympians remained in deep development for the next two years, but Riordan made sure every minute was well spent. The New York Times best-selling author used 2021 to work on both Percy Jackson television scripts as well as the first spin-off in the novelized universe, collaborating with author Mark Oshiro to pen The Sun and the Star.
Oshiro is the first author to co-write a Percy Jackson book, as all previous elements of the PJO universe had come from Riordan and Riordan alone. Speaking to ComicBook.com's Liam Crowley at The Sun and the Sun Star book tour, Riordan acknowledged that the collaborative effort of the Percy Jackson writers' room helped him embrace dividing and conquering on the page.
"I think working in the Hollywood model helped me, in general, be more open to the idea of collaborating," Riordan said. "I think writers, at least in my experience, they tend to do their own thing, writers of books. We work a lot in seclusion, but for this, with the Hollywood stuff, obviously it's all a team effort there."
That is not to say that Riordan had hesitancies about working alongside Oshiro, as he praised The Sun and the Star's co-author for being so easy to work with.
"I think I did learn a little bit from [the Percy Jackson show], just in terms of the back and forth, but honestly I have to say, working with Mark, it's really easy," Riordan continued. "Writing a book is never easy, but this was very seamless, and a really great experience."
Riordan now turns his attention back to Percy Jackson, both on a novelized and televised front. The sixth installment in the Percy Jackson book series, The Chalice of the Gods, is set to hit shelves this September, the same month as Disney D23 Expo. There is no word on what involvement the Percy Jackson Disney+ series will have at that event, but considering they debuted a teaser trailer at 2022's D23 with just three months of filming done, it seems plausible that the now fully-shot eight-episode season could have some presence at the event.
The Sun and the Star is available in bookstores and online now. Percy Jackson and the Olympians is in post production and is set to stream on Disney+ in 2024.