Disney is doing everything it can to make sure you cannot go without its new streaming service Disney+, now or ever. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, and his wife just announced on Twitter that the studio will be adapting his beloved pentalogy of children’s books.
By which I mean there are five. There are five Percy Jackson books.
“Hey, Percy Jackson fans,” Riordan said in a statement. For the past decade, you’ve worked hard to champion a faithful onscreen 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 & 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!"
The Percy Jackson follow the title character as he discovers that he is not, in fact, just an ordinary teenager but in fact a demigod, the son of the Greek god Poseidon and a human woman. It ends up that his world is stuffed far more full of creatures from Greek mythology than he ever realized, and things take off from there.
The Percy Jackson books include The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian. 20th Century Fox adapted those first two as movies in 2010 and 2013, and while they did pretty well at the box office, they got mixed reviews, with fans dinging them for changing a ton about the source material.
These flicks were made back in the day when studios were putting out big splashy fantasy films not so much because they believed in them but because they wanted something that would succeed on the level of the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies. (See also The Golden Compass movie.) The first Percy Jackson movie was even directed by Chris Columbus, who helmed the first couple Harry Potter films.
Things have changed since then, and thanks to stuff like Game of Thrones, the name of the game is get big fantasy series onto the TV, which creators seem to like more, because it gives them the opportunity to explore their fantasy worlds in more detail. I could be wrong, but Disney+ seems like it’ll be a good home for this series, although we have no idea when it might premiere.
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