It’s taken a while for Disney Plus’ Percy Jackson series to start gathering momentum after it was first officially announced to be in the works a year ago, but over the last couple of months, the fantasy adaptation has been picking up some serious steam.
In January, author Rick Riordan revealed that he was still waiting on the pilot script to be approved by the Mouse House’s top brass, which he followed up in April by confirming it had been given the okay. Not only that, but the casting search for the title hero is now underway, so there’s a real chance that Percy Jackson could be in front of cameras long before the end of the year.
In more good news, the core creative team is also coming together after Jonathan Steinberg and Dan Shotz boarded the project as executive producers, with the duo’s production company having signed an exclusive development deal with the Disney-owned Fox 21. Steinberg is best known for co-creating CBS’ apocalyptic Jericho and Starz’s swashbuckling Black Sails, so he’s more than familiar with genre-heavy adventure TV.
A new report now offers that the first season of Percy Jackson will run for eight episodes, which sounds about right. The majority of big budget streaming exclusives tend to span either eight or ten installments, and Disney Plus might be keen to avoid the so-called ‘Netflix bloat’ that regularly sees their competitors in the streaming wars stretch things out for a little too long. In any case, the plan is for each season to cover one of the novels, and if the opener plays well, then fans can start getting hyped about the remaining four books being brought to life.
