Rick Riordan nearly turned his back on adaptations forever after Percy Jackson films

Excitement is building for Percy Jackson And The Olympians, the Disney+ adaptation of Rick Riordan’s beloved young adult series. Part of the excitement is from seeing the books turned into a beautiful, Disney-budget television series. But another huge part of the excitement is the chance to correct the mistakes that were made in the previous big screen adaptation, Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters.

Riordan has long been vocal about his displeasure with the 20th Century Fox films, which starred Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, and Brandon T. Jackson. In 2018, he publicized emails he’d written to the production team expressing serious concerns with the script and aging up the characters (the principal actors hadn’t been cast at the time of the emails). Those concerns went mostly unaddressed. “After the movie experience, I basically wrote off Hollywood for a long, long time,” Riordan says in a new Variety profile. “I really didn’t want to have anything to do with the film industry. There were many years of me saying, ‘I don’t want to engage. I don’t want to think about other adaptations. I’m done.’”

According to a Variety source, some of the film’s failure is that then-co-chairman of 20th Century Fox Tom Rothman “was notorious for doing movies on the cheap. So if Harry Potter is what you’re aiming for, you’re automatically handicapping the project.” After Sea Of Monsters’ uninspired box office, the franchise fizzled (a Fox source told the outlet that priorities for the film slate shifted). But when Disney acquired the studio, Riordan felt “a glimmer of hope.” He tells Variety that “when it started to become clear that something was going to happen with me or without me, I had a long talk with Becky, my wife. We said, ‘Well, if something’s going to happen, it’s probably best to give it one more shot.’”

Riordan and his wife managed to become executive producers on the show, giving him more creative control over the proceedings and making it an overall more positive experience. He has nothing but praise for the series’ young cast, Walker Scobell, Leah Jeffries, and Aryan Simhadri. “My feeling was always that television was the better format for Percy, because it allows us a larger canvas to tell more of the story,” Riordan says. “And to be more faithful to the source material, which is what the fans of the books really would love to see.” Fans will have their opportunity to tune in when the series begins streaming on December 20.