“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” is a fantasy television series based on the book series of the same name by Riordan.
Let’s dive into some trivia and facts about the series.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians is an American fantasy television series
- It is created by Rick Riordan and Jonathan E. Steinberg
- The series is streaming on Disney+
- It is based on the book series of the same name by Riordan
- Walker Scobell stars as Percy Jackson
- Alongside Leah Sava Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri
- Development on the series began by May 2020
- Following a pitch by Riordan to Disney Branded Television
- Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz were announced as showrunners in July 2021
- With James Bobin hired to direct the first episode in October
- Scobell was cast in the lead role in January 2022
- With Jeffries and Simhadri joining the cast in May
- By September, Anders Engström and Jet Wilkinson were also set to direct multiple episodes of the series
- Filming began in June 2022 in Vancouver, British Columbia
- It concluded in February 2023
- With additional cast members revealed throughout 2022 and 2023
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians premiered on December 19, 2023, on Disney+
- The first season consists of eight episodes
- The series received positive reviews from critics
- They largely praised its faithfulness to the source material, the worldbuilding, and the performances of the cast
- On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% rating
- Based on 57 critics’ reviews
- With an average rating of 7.4/10
- The website’s consensus reads: “A faithful adaptation of Rick Riordan’s novels, Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a lovingly realized odyssey through adolescence and myth”
- Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 73 out of 100
- Based on 24 critics
- Indicating “generally favorable reviews”
- In December 2023, Disney announced that 13.3 million viewers watched the premiere episode in its first six days on Disney+ and Hulu
- 12-year-old demigod Percy Jackson is accused by the Greek god Zeus of stealing his thunderbolt and races to find it and restore order to Olympus
- In November 2018, Rick Riordan stated that he believed he would have no creative control over a Disney reboot of the Percy Jackson novel series if it were to happen, much like his experience with the film series with 20th Century Fox
- In December 2019, Riordan pitched an adaptation of the novels to the Walt Disney Company, which had acquired Fox in March of that year
- By May 2020, a Disney+ series based on Percy Jackson was in the works, with the first season set to adapt the first book in the series, The Lightning Thief
- Riordan revealed in March 2021 that searches for the series’ directors and cast was underway
- With James Bobin was announced as the pilot episode’s director in October
- Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz were also announced as showrunners in July
- The series was greenlit in January 2022, with Disney Branded Television, 20th Television, and the Gotham Group producing the project
- Steinberg, Shotz, Bobin, and Riordan were announced as executive producers alongside Rebecca Riordan, Bert Salke, Monica Owusu-Breen, Jim Rowe, Anders Engström, Jet Wilkinson, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, and D. J. Goldberg
- At the D23 Expo in September, Anders Engström and Jet Wilkinson were revealed to be executive producing the series as well
- The same month, Riordan revealed that Engström would direct the third and fourth episodes while Wilkinson would direct the fifth and sixth
- The series was reportedly made with a budget of $12 to 15 million per episode
- Drafts of the pilot episode were being reviewed by March 2021
- In April 2021, it was announced that Steinberg would serve as co-writer and executive producer of the pilot alongside Riordan
- The same day, Monica Owusu-Breen, Daphne Olive, Stewart Strandberg, Zoë Neary, Joe Tracz, and Xavier Stiles joined as writers
- Each season of the series will adapt one installment of the book series, with the first season being an adaptation of The Lightning Thief
- There are also plans to adapt additional material within the franchise for the series
- In addition to writing the pilot, Riordan and co-showrunner Steinberg created a series bible for the show
- As well as planning the plot for the first season and creating ideas for potential future seasons
- The first season will consist of eight episodes
- Writing for the second season had begun by March 2023
- Though Riordan cautioned that it had yet to be greenlit
- Plans for future seasons include a further exploration of Chiron’s disability
- Tish Monaghan serves as the costume designer
- By October 2023, Bear McCreary had been writing music for the series, after previously working with Steinberg and Shots in the series Human Target, Black Sails and See
- Members of the music company Sparks & Shadows, which McCreary was a co-founder of, were was involved
- The score for the series was released digitally by Hollywood Records on December 22, with Sparks & Shadows credited as composer and McCreary credited with writing the themes
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