Percy Jackson and the Olympians showrunners explain why the show made "a million changes" from the book

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is in the middle of its first season on Disney+, and so far it seems to have gone over pretty well with fans. This is a far cry from the reception to the early 2010s movie series, which upset many of the Percy Jackson faithful because of how little it resembled the beloved books by Rick Riordan. The new TV show is much closer to the source material, in part because Riordan himself is heavily involved with it as a co-creator, writer and executive producer.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of changes from the books, though. During the second episode, Grover (Aryan Simhadri) meets with the Council of Cloven Elders in a scene which did not happen in the novels. The villain Medusa (Jessica Parker Kennedy) also received a pretty major overhaul which explored her tragic origin story.

Showrunners and executive producers Jon Steinberg and Dan Shotz recently addressed the "million changes" that the Percy Jackson show is making from the books, and how they "hope that almost all of them are invisible."

"These are very different mediums, and I think they tell stories differently," Steinberg told The Direct. "And so I think you have to embrace the idea that everything in the book is going to have to find a different form to inhabit in order to be something I'd want to watch on screen.”

Steinberg went on to discuss how passionately Riordan himself got behind a lot of the changes, and how the author was "excited about getting a second go" at the story of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

"So sometimes it's sequencing, it's causation, it's the way set pieces play out is a little different, but it made it work better. Some of it is bigger, some of them, frankly, are things that I think Rick [Riordan] was excited about getting a second go at it. He wrote that book 20 some odd years ago, and you don't get a second draft... And I think it was exciting and fun for him to sit in conversation about, 'Alright, let's rip the lid off this thing again.'

Would you do everything the same? Who would do everything the same 20 years later? No one. Neither would Rick. I think some changes in the way some of these relationships work and was something that we were all really excited about."

The previous movie adaptation of Percy Jackson had issues in part because of its choices; Riordan explained late last year how he "pleaded" with 20th Century Fox not to go through with some of its deviations and creative decisions. The support that Riordan, Steinberg and Shotz are getting with the TV show is much better. According to Shotz, Disney has been a great partner for the series.

"And Disney was just from day one, just like as each step happened, [they were] always having a conversation," he said. "So as we were building this, from how we were shooting it, where we were shooting it, who we were casting, where we were going, what it needed. It was always a really good conversation to make sure that the show needed what it needed. I'm really grateful to them for that because that doesn't happen very often. And everybody knew that this was such a special property that we needed to do it right.”

Percy Jackson and the Olympians drops episodes Tuesdays on Disney+. Here's hoping the rest of the season manages to strike the same excellent balance as the first batch of episodes.

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h/t CBR.com