Over the course of this weekend, Disney and its many businesses have been releasing a plethora of announcements in celebration of this year’s D23 Expo. Additional details regarding the upcoming film version of Percy Jackson and the Olympians were revealed today. Disney has released the first trailer to hold us over till it finally arrives. The trailer doesn’t give away much plot information, but it does an outstanding job of building the mood for viewers. Narrated by the protagonist Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell), this scene provides our first glimpse of Camp Half-Blood and its famous orange t-shirts as well as a foreshadowing of the impending danger that awaits the campers. Percy Jackson, the protagonist of the book series that inspired the hit film, is the main focus of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Percy, a 12-year-old child with a very typical life, is introduced to readers in the first book in the series, The Lightning Thief.
That is until his instructor morphs into a murderous monster out to get him. When his mother learns the truth, she reveals it to her son: Percy is a demigod. To help Percy adjust to being with similarly-adjusted peers, she sends him to Camp Half-Blood. There, he discovers new aspects of himself and realities he had before dismissed as impossible. As the conflict quickly intensifies, he must fly across the country to the criminal underworld for help. Since Riordan’s announcement in 2020, fans have been eagerly awaiting the start of the new Percy Jackson series. Even though the programme hadn’t been officially greenlit at the time, diehards of Riordan’s book series were still waiting with bated breath for any word. At the start of this year, Disney gave the project the go-ahead, turning a once-fanciful idea into reality.
Since then, the show’s main characters and supporting cast have been cast, production has commenced, and the year 2024 has been set as the projected premiere date. Attempts to bring Riordan’s mythical world to life have been made before, most recently in 2010. To begin with, Logan Lerman directed a film version of The Lightning Thief. The movie failed to connect with audiences despite the quality of the original material in large part because Riordan was not involved in the production. Despite this, a sequel was made based on the second novel, The Sea of Monsters. After then, interest in the film series dwindled. The programme continues what appears to be a new trend of “children’s literature receiving better adaptations,” which also includes Disney+’s highly anticipated and newly announced Eragon series. Equally reimagined by Disney+ is the Spiderwick Chronicles series.
While Disney+ is a well-known outlet, Netflix has remade A Series of Unfortunate Events into a three-season series that, unlike the film, covers all of the books in the series. In addition to Percy, Annabeth, and Grover, Aryan Simhadri and Leah Sava Jeffries also feature as main characters in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In addition to Megan Mullally and Jason Mantzoukas, the cast also features Virginia Kull, Glynn Turman, Tim Sharp, Dior Goodjohn, Oliver Morton, and Charlie Bushnell. The pilot, directed by James Bobin, is a collaboration between Riordan and Jon Steinberg. The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, and D.J. Goldberg serve as executive producers, along with Jim Rowe, Anders Engström, Jet Wilkinson, Rebecca Riordan, Anders Engström, and Dan Shotz. The projected premiere date for Percy Jackson and the Olympians is 2024.