Rick Riordan’s world of Greek mythology has a chance at live-action redemption. Despite being one of the most popular book franchises at a time where young adult novels turning into film franchises was all the rage (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent), the motion-picture adaptation of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books was abandoned after just two installments. While both 2010’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and 2013’s Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters made their budgets back, neither had overwhelmingly positive box office returns. It didn’t help that both films strayed significantly from the source material, leaving diehard fans frustrated at the absence of Ares, the altering of Percy’s prophecy, the rushed resurrection of Kronos, and multiple more unwelcome adjustments.
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Despite author Rick Riordan offering multiple revisions to the scripts and warning 20th Century Fox of the imminent backlash if they went forward with the unfaithful adaptation, the films were released without Riordan’s consultation.
“To you guys, it’s a couple hours entertainment. To me, it’s my life’s work going through a meat grinder when I pleaded with them not to do it,” Riordan said in 2020. “So yeah. But it’s fine. All fine. We’re gonna fix it soon.”
And fixing it is actively in the works. A serialized adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is coming to Disney+, with Riordan himself serving as an executive producer on the show. While he refused to watch the past films, Riordan assured fans that he will be locked in the every frame of the upcoming series.
“I will be watching it every step of the way, from audition tapes all the way through to the final cut of every episode,” Riordan wrote on GoodReads. “I imagine it will be like my books in some ways. By the time one is published, I don’t need to sit down and read it because I’ve read it while I was writing it like a hundred times!”
The eight-episode Disney+ series is set to cover the events of The Lightning Thief, Riordan’s first installment of the five Percy Jackson books. The events of Percy’s first summer at Camp Half-Blood are a complete story, but it lays the groundwork for a much bigger narrative. There’s no confirmation on whether Percy Jackson will receive a second season, but Riordan emphasized that the show is being developed with sequels in mind.
“That’s the idea, yes. Of course, first we have to get approval to do future seasons,” Riordan wrote. “Right now, we are only green-lit for one season, but if you all watch and like it, I am optimistic we will get approval to do more.”
Fans of the books will know that The Lightning Thief is just scratching the surface of this world, which has enough source material to rival the most expansive cinematic universes in entertainment history. Casting actors still in their adolescence for the main trio of Percy, Annabeth, and Grover indicates that Disney is playing the long game here, similar to how Harry Potter utilized a young ensemble to ensure they aged appropriately throughout the franchise.
As has been the case with most Disney+ shows, a potential green light on future seasons likely won’t come until the show begins airing. That said, it doesn’t mean Season 1 won’t tease future storylines, such as some children of Hades in the Lotus Casino or purple shirts scattered across California.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is currently in its third of eight scheduled production months.
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Image Courtesy of DC Studios
