There’s no shame in any creator admitting they weren’t best pleased with the live-action adaptations of their works, but Rick Riordan still took a risk by getting into bed with Disney ahead of the streaming service’s upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.
Having been burned twice before by the 20th Century Fox blockbusters – with the company now ironically under the Mouse House’s umbrella – the author was keenly aware that he had to convince both himself and the fandom that rebooting a pair of thoroughly mediocre blockbusters under new ownership was the smart call.
Besides some unsavory backlash, the response to the footage so far has been widely positive ahead of Percy Jackson‘s premiere on Dec. 20, with Riordan coming clean to The Wrap about the renewed pressures he faced becoming heavily involved with the hotly-anticipated do-over.
“I don’t know if it’s pressure, so much as I feel a sense of responsibility to the readers. I want to do everything I can to do right by them, and make sure that this is a show that they’re going to feel good about, and feel like they recognize and and love and relate to. There’s a lot of, I guess, pent-up wish fulfillment about having an adaptation that really sort of reflects the books. And I think — I hope — this series is going to be the antidote for that. If you’re a fan of the books, I think you can rest easy. I think you’re going to be very pleased. And I think it holds up very well even if you haven’t read the books! I think it’s a really fun series, that the actors are just fantastic.”
The best fantasy adaptations toe the line between appealing to those with an affinity to the source material while converting a brand new audience at the same time, and even though the bar to clear in order to deliver the best Percy Jackson yet is fairly low, there’s plenty of reasons to be confident third time has marked the charm.