Percy Jackson producers explain how the TV show improves on "disappointing" films

The first two episodes of the new show Percy Jackson and the Olympians are available to watch now on Disney+, and so far, it sounds like people are loving them. Based on the series of young adult fantasy books by Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson tells the story of a boy who finds out he's actually the son of the Greek god Poseidon. Heroism, adventure, and time spent in a summer camp full of other demigods soon follows.

The first two Percy Jackson books were adapted before as a pair of movies in the 2010s starring Logan Lerman in the lead role (Walker Scobell plays him in the new show). By and large, both movies were met with a rousing chorus of "meh" from fans; 20th Century Fox never got around to adapting the rest of the series.

Riordan, meanwhile, took things a little harder, famously sharing in a now-deleted tweet that seeing the films get made was like watching "my life's work going through a meat grinder when I pleaded with them not to do it." This time around, he and his producing partner/wife Rebecca Riordan made sure they had a lot more input. "There’s no detail that we were not involved in," Rick told Tech Radar. "We were involved for the last four years and every conversation, every choice from casting, artwork, scripts…all of it." It was the Riordan's involvement, for instance, that convinced Disney to adapt the Percy Jackson books as a TV show rather than a series of movies, something Rick felt was important as TV "gives you a broader canvas."

The new Percy Jackson show cast actors who were the right age

But what exactly was the problem with the earlier Percy Jackson movies? There were several issues, but one thing Rebecca Riordan pointed out is that the actors playing Percy and his friends were too old to be playing children. "When the [first] film came out, it was very disappointing because of the age of the characters, who were teenage, and it didn’t hit," she said. "There were a lot of fans who came to the books because of those movies – and there are still a lot of fans from those movies – but the little kids were disappointed as it wasn’t friendly for them. Teenagers were disappointed as it wasn’t hip enough for them, so it just didn’t resonate with people the way we would have liked it."

This time, actors like Aryan Simhadri, Leah Sava Jeffries and Scobell are all closer in age to the characters as they're introduced in the books. Still, the Riordans also want the new show to be enjoyed by people who found the story through the movies. "There are a lot of people who aren’t readers that have never picked up Rick’s books," Rebecca said. "They come to the fandom with preconceived ideas from the movies that don’t match the rest of the fandom that has read the books, so there is a pressure to try to embrace those viewers as well, to give them something that they’re interested in."

So far, the Percy Jackson show seems to be striking the right balance. We'll see if they can keep that up as new episodes come out on Disney+ on Tuesdays.

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