When Rick Riordan began telling his seven-year-old son stories about the Greek gods before he went to sleep, he never imagined that those tender moments would transform his life forever. Haley had been excited about mythology at the school where she was in second grade in San Antonio, Texas, but as a hyperactive child that she was, it was not enough for her father to tell him what he had already heard. When he ran out of stories, he had no choice but to start inventing, and that’s how Percy Jackson was born, apparently just another student at an American school, but in reality he is a demigod, son of Poseidon, who has in life a mission much more important than getting good grades: recover the lightning bolt that has been stolen from Zeus.
Although Riordan had already written another book that had not been very successful, when he developed those stories for his son into a novel, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief. He became a demigod of youth literature. He received a succulent enough advance from Miramax Books to abandon his regular job and from there he devoted himself fully to telling Percy’s adventures in six novels, which have sold 180 million copies worldwide.
As it could not be otherwise, five years after that first book was published, in 2010, 20th Century Fox released the film adaptation, directed by Chris Columbus and starring a then-unknown Logan Lerman (no relation to the writer of this), in an ambitious blockbuster that also featured Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean and Steven Coogan.
Although the reviews were not wonderful, especially because the plot of the film did not follow the novel to the letter, it was a solid success: with a cost of 87 million euros, it ended up raising 207 million of that currency globally. . In 2013, the sequel, Percy Jackson and the Sea of ??Monsters, came with another director, which did not turn out as well. Filmed with a similar budget, the response was a little more lukewarm, so the studio never completed the trilogy.
In March 2019, Disney acquired Fox, receiving the rights to the books as part of the package. Frustrated by not having had any creative control over the film adaptations, Riordan decided to take the bull by the horns and in December of that year he proposed to the new owner of the rights that he direct a television version.
And that’s how Percy Jackson and the Olympians was launched, whose first two episodes, of a total of eight, can be seen starting today on Disney. Unlike the films, the series faithfully follows the text that made Riordan, who is co-writer and one of the executive producers, famous in a project that, if successful, could dedicate a season to each book starring Jackson.
With a cast that includes special appearances by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Toby Stephens, Jay Duplass and Lance Reddick, in his last performance before passing away in March of this year, all the weight is placed on the shoulders of Walker Scobell, the promising actor 14-year-old who plays Percy, and who played the same character as Ryan Reynolds as a child in The Adam Project, the Netflix film in which he began his career. Two other young promises, Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri, are in charge of the roles of Annabeth and Grover, their adventure companions.
