After a year full of pre-production updates that had an entire fandom biting its nails, author Rick Riordan announced that his Percy Jackson and The Olympians has officially been greenlit by Disney and will enter production this summer.
The forthcoming Disney Plus series will adapt Riordan’s 2005 best-selling middle-grade fantasy novel, The Lightning Thief, into a new series for the platform. After the series was infamously blemished by notoriously panned film adaptations a decade ago, fans are excited at what has been billed as the adaptation the series — and its fandom — deserves.
And they couldn’t be happier. Expressions of hype and excitement flooded out as #PercyJackson trended on Twitter following the announcement.
One fan put up a summoning circle tweet hoping for “Percy Jackson book style episode titles.” The original novel featured such hits as: “I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher,” “I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom,” and “We Take a Zebra to Vegas.”
Some fans choose to express their excitement with reaction image tweets, including one looking forward to what will be a nostalgic and emotional rollercoaster for many. That tweet read, “Me watching the Percy Jackson show as an adult trying to explain to my adult friends why it means so much to me.”
And others are remembering their favorite moments from the series in preparation for their transitions to the small screen. “Remember when 12-year-old Percy Jackson mailed Medusa’s head to Olympus for all the gods to see with a message saying ‘with best wishes, Percy Jackson??’ one fan asked. “Yeah, legend behavior.”
The news also reignited fans’ desires to see Logan Lerman, the star of the previous film adaptations, in the new series. “Right, so let’s bring back the Logan Lerman as Poseidon in the Percy Jackson adaption campaign,” ad admirer suggested. Comparisons of Lerman with official artwork do make a strong argument for the casting.
“I am manifesting Logan Lerman returning as Poseidon,” writes another.
The 30-year-old was cast as Percy, canonically 12, at age 17. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was criticized for odd casting choices that aged up all the protagonists while maintaining character traits and settings that don’t quite work anymore.
Since then, Lerman’s gone on to film other major roles in films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall. No casting choices have been announced yet, but we can certainly hope to see the actor back in the Empire State Building when Percy Jackson and The Olympians finally comes to Disney Plus.
