Percy Jackson Reboot Release Date Revealed
It's on the way!
Percy Jackson fans will have to wait a bit longer than expected for the upcoming Disney+ series based on the best-selling young adult book series. Creator Rick Riordan has revealed that the series will not debut next year, as most expected, but likely in early 2024. In a new blog post on his website, Riordan has updated fans on the progress of production on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and while he revealed some interesting tidbits from the set, the revelation of the premiere date is all the talk among the Percy Jackson fandom.
While acknowledging that he had previously predicted a 2023 premiere date, Riordan said seeing the realities of production has caused him to amend his timeline. “I think the most likely air date will probably be early 2024. Again, that’s just me guessing,” Riordan wrote. “The actual release dates are determined by the studio and the streaming service.” According to Deadline, production (which began on June 2) has been ongoing in Vancouver, British Columbia on the show’s first season, which includes eight episodes and covers the events in the first Percy Jackson book, The Lightning Thief.
Now in its second month of production, the series is still filming scenes for the first three episodes simultaneously, Riordan revealed. He expects shooting to continue throughout the rest of the year, which means a finished product isn’t as close as he had hoped. “Post-production will begin in early 2023, when the pieces are fitted together, edited and augmented with all the special effects and sound,” Riordan wrote. “This process also takes months and months, and that’s not even accounting for closed-captioning, subtitling and dubbing into other languages for our international viewers.” It does leave an outside chance that a fall 2023 release date could happen, but that could be easily bumped, as Disney+ often has other major series, particularly from their Star Wars and Marvel properties, premiere at that time.
The series follows 12-year-old Percy Jackson, played by Walter Scobell (Netflix’s The Adam Project) who discovers that he is a demigod with powers from his father Poseidon, the Greek god with power over the seas. When he is accused of stealing Zeus’ master lightning bolt, he must partner with his new friends, fellow demigods Grover (Aryan Simhadri) and Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) to recover it and clear his name. Recent casting announcements included Charlie Bushnell (Diary of a Future President) as demigod Luke Castellan (one of the series’ main antagonists), Dior Goodjohn (Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?) as demigod Clarisse La Rue, Virginia Kull as Sally Jackson, Glynn Turman as Chiron, Jason Mantzoukas as Dionysus, Timm Sharp as Gabe Ugliano and Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) as Alecto. Although no official production images have been released, a picture of Scobell holding what may be Poseidon’s trident has circulated on social media.
Rick Riordan and Jon Steinberg wrote the series pilot, and James Bobin (Muppets Most Wanted) directs. Steinberg will produce and act as showrunner, alongside Dan Shotz. The announcement of a new series was welcomed by Percy Jackson fans worldwide, including, inexplicably, The Empire State Building, which used its official Twitter account recently to proclaim their love for Percy.
The show is just the latest incarnation of the popular book series, which has sold over 180 million copies worldwide. A film series, starring Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario, made its debut in 2010 with Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, with a sequel, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, releasing in 2013. The films received generally lukewarm reviews from critics, and didn’t exactly electrify the box office. Percy Jackson fans in particular weren’t too happy about the many changes the film made from the books, and the film series ended there. The new Disney+ adaptation promises to be more faithful to the books, especially with Riordan directly involved, which he was not with the films. An off-Broadway musical based on the first book, titled The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, made its debut in April of 2017. It is currently not playing, although the production has discussed a possible upcoming national tour.
