How the 'Percy Jackson' cast and crew gave the beloved book series a redemption arc on television (2024)

The timing was right. Three years after the release of the final book in the "Harry Potter" series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the world was getting ready to say goodbye to Pottermania when part one of its film adaptation would be released later that year.

Hollywood, and fans of YA fantasies, were looking for the next big thing.

"Percy Jackson" had the numbers: The book has spent 702 weeks to date on the New York Times best seller list for children's series, falling only behind "Harry Potter," "The Hunger Games," and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." It also had the fanbase: Since the release of "The Lightning Thief" in 2005, the Percy Jackson universe has exploded into over 15 books.

To kick things off right, Chris Columbus, who directed the first two "Harry Potter" movies, was on board to direct; Uma Thurman would show up to play the snake-headed Medusa.

By all accounts, it should have been a smash hit.

Instead, it was a mildly profitable, middling release that alienated the series' most loyal fans and critics alike.

"Fans of Rick Riordan's books… will be disappointed to learn that, in the translation of this first book from page to screen, the title character has gone from a wisecracking misfit who wakes up with superpowers to, well, a washout," Michael O'Sullivan wrote in a review for The Washington Post.

"Maybe if you're aged between eight and 12, or exceptionally dim-witted, you may not notice that this is a tenth-rate rip-off of Harry Potter, with Greek mythology taking the place of magic," Chris Tookey wrote for the Daily Mail in a one-star review.

But 20th Century Fox wasn't ready to give up yet. A sequel based on the second book in the series, "The Sea of Monsters," was released in 2013. But after turning a similarly modest profit and garnering another round of middling-to-negative reviews, the budding franchise came to a grinding halt, leaving the three final books of the main Percy Jackson series unadapted.

For Riordan, who consulted on the first film but declined to be involved in the second, the entire affair was very personal.

"To you guys, it's a couple hours' entertainment," Riordan wrote in a since-deleted tweet, according to EW. "To me, it's my life's work going through a meat grinder when I pleaded with them not to do it."

That's why Riordan and his wife Becky's decision to step back into the fray with "Percy Jackson and the Olympians," the Disney+ television series they both executive produce, was weighty.

"I think Becky put it best," Riordan told Business Insider. "She said, 'We don't want to wonder what if, if we don't do this, for the rest of our lives.' We thought, at best, if it works, it could be amazing, and it could be cathartic, and help us move past that film experience. At worst, maybe it doesn't work, and oh well. I go back to writing books."

Luckily, the results are pretty clear this time —"Percy Jackson and the Olympians" works. (Though Riordan is still writing, and released a brand new "Percy Jackson" book this fall.) With the Riordans' involvement, a hefty Disney budget, and a talented young cast who have the potential to grow with the series, it's not hard to see the potential for Disney+ to launch a longstanding television franchise that rights the wrongs of the maligned films.

'Percy Jackson' adheres closely to the books

Within the first ten minutes of "Percy Jackson," it's clear that this adaptation is determined to hew closely to Riordan's text —and it wants you to know it.

Like the book, the show opens with a monologue from Percy himself (Walker Scobell) outlining exactly how dangerous it is to be a half-blood, culling words directly from Riordan's pages. The episode titles correspond with select chapter titles in the novel. And the details are immaculately crafted, down to the orange Camp Half-Blood shirts that, as costume designer Tish Monaghan said at New York Comic Con, were individually hand-dyed after experimentation to find the perfect shade.

While the book was the show's north star, having Riordan himself on set didn't hurt either.

"It was just really nice having him involved, because he felt like a walking encyclopedia of this stuff," James Bobin, who directed the first two episodes of the show, told BI at NYCC. "Any questions, he'd know."

Showrunners Dan Shotz and Jon Steinberg knew they weren't going to be able to shoot every single detail on the page. But after spending time with the Riordans in a COVID bubble, Shotz told BI that he came away with a solid understanding of the key beats of the story, and the spirit of the book series that needed to translate from page to screen.

"I think no one, not us, not Rick or Becky, wanted to feel beholden to anything that had come before but the book," Steinberg said.

Finding the perfect trio

Staying faithful to the book meant diverging from the movies in one crucial way: by casting actual children to play the series' central trio of Percy, Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries), and Grover (Aryan Simhadri). The logistical demands of working with children are steep — child actors can only work a certain amount of hours in a day, meaning that production can't run a typical 12 to 14-hour day on set, and costs can stack up.

"Everybody whose life was going to be more complicated because we were doing it this way understood, and committed to, and embraced at the beginning that this is just what the show is," Steinberg told BI at NYCC.

Investing in a production centered around children is always a gamble — "It's like, 'How can we take this multi-million dollar project and rest it on the shoulders of three adolescents who aren't very well known?" Riordan told BI — but according to Steinberg, the co-showrunner, aging the characters up was a "non-starter."

The Riordans and others involved with the series were quick to praise the young cast in interviews with BI, and have supported them in the public sphere, particularly after racist backlash to Jeffries' casting (Jeffires is black; her character, Annabeth, is described as white in the books) flared up online.

And Scobell, Jeffries, and Simhadri gel just as well off-screen as they do on. In a group interview, the trio were quick to banter about their relationship, joking that it's still rocky like the early stages of Percy, Grover, and Annabeth's.

The future of 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians'

If "Percy Jackson" is a hit — early reviews of the series have been overwhelmingly positive — it has plenty of room to grow. Its young cast members have a few years before they begin to age out of their roles. And there's certainly no shortage of source material, with four more books —and thus, four more potential seasons — in the main "Percy Jackson" series.

The early episodes of "'Percy Jackson and the Olympians" not only take the source material seriously, but deliver on the intangibles that the film lacked, channeling the spirit and childlike wonder of the books that persists alongside the plot's high stakes.

"It's a very personal story that Rick told, and it's like a third child for them, these books. And we just wanted to honor that," co-showrunner Shotz told BI.

If fans like what they see, it could very well be the start of a longstanding franchise. There's plenty of potential to expand to spin-offs, an animated series, or even Percy at a Disney theme park, as Disney 20th Television president Karey Burke posited in an interview with Variety.

But for now, Rick Riordan is taking it one step — and one season — at a time, even if the ultimate goal is to adapt the full series.

"If we can tell 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians,' if we can get five seasons, that would be huge."