Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a fantastic series with relatable and witty characters. The author Rick Rordian began to write stories about the demigod Percy Jackson inspired by his son’s reading difficulties. He chose mythology because that was the only thing that interested his son. Percy Jackson is a 12 year old boy who has moved schools multiple times due to creepy or unsafe events happening. He discovers that he is a demi-god, a son of Poseidon. This is a 5 book series with another 5 book series after it, called The Heroes of Olympus.

The cast of the new Percy Jackson series are the following trio of young actors. Walker Scobell,  who had his debuting role in The Adam Project playing Young Adam with Ryan Reynolds and will be playing Percy Jackson. Leah Sava Jeffries who has been in the show Empire, and will be playing Annabeth Chase, and Aryan Simhadri who has played in a number of projects, including SEAL Team, Ador, She-Hulk, and House of the Dragon. He will play Grover Underwood in the new Percy Jackson series.

There was a prior attempt to move the Percy Jackson fandom from paper to screen but these two films had flopped in the eyes of Rick and his fans. The reasons behind why many people had been so disappointed by this attempt at making a Percy Jackson movie franchise is that the characters were extremely different from their book counterparts. In the book series Percy and Annabeth are 12 years old, with the exception of Grover who is in human years in his early thirties, but appears to look 12-13 due to the slow aging of satyrs. The movie producers had decided to age Percy and the gang up to 16. I’d say that Percy’s casting was pretty on point, you can’t exactly change the main character, who was played by Logan Lerman. Annabeth’s casting was disappointing. She is one of many strong female characters and her iconic appearance and personality was severely underplayed. Grover was much more confident and girl crazy than he was in the books, which was funny to see but didn’t help boost the movie’s popularity. 

Another downside to the movies was the interactions between Percy and Annabeth. At first they aren’t friends or obviously have a crush on one another (that comes later in the series!) Their friendship ,and later relationship, deepens over time. The last major issue I found in the movie’s was the lack of accuracy in the plot. As a kid who had loved reading Percy Jackson, I found it frustrating that the movie had taken out bits of important plot scenes and replaced them with different ones.

 The expectations for this new tv series is extremely high, since Rick Rordian will be an active part of creating and filming the show. It is set to come out on Disney Plus early 2024. I, myself, am very excited for this show to be released!