The first scene from the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series is being shot today. The Percy Jackson franchise began as a series of novels by Rick Riordan that were originally published from 2005 through 2009, following a young boy who discovers that he is the son of the Greek God Poseidon, which thrusts him on a journey to stop a war between the Gods. The first story, The Lightning Thief, was adapted into a film in 2010 starring Logan Lerman as Percy, Brandon T. Jackson as his satyr protector Grover Underwood, and Alexandra Daddario as the warrior daughter of Athena, Annabeth Chase, who ends up becoming Percy Jackson’s love interest. That project got a sequel, 2013’s Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, but the film franchise petered out there.
Although the Percy Jackson books have continued on with a variety of spin-offs and companion novels, the media end of the franchise remained dormant until May 2020, when Disney+ announced that they were resurrecting the property as a streaming series. The pilot episode, which was co-written by Riordan and showrunner Jonathan E. Steinberg, is being helmed by The Muppets director James Bobin. Although further casting announcements haven’t been made yet, the show has officially put its core trio in place with The Adam Project‘s Walker Scobell as Percy, Aryan Simhadri as Grover, and Leah Jeffries as Annabeth.
Today marks the official beginning of production for Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Riordan honored the occasion by taking to Twitter to share a photo of his chair on set, teasing “Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?” His wife Becky Riordan also posted a follow-up to an earlier Tweet, saying that “today is the day we start filming” and saying that they are about to shoot a scene from the first episode with Scobell and Simhadri. Check out both Tweets below:
Click here to view original the original posts from Rick Riordan and Becky Riordan.
Thanks to Becky’s intel, the scene that they are filming today seems to be a two-hander between Percy and Grover. This means that it likely takes place before the pair head to the demigod training center Camp Half-Blood and meet Annabeth, which is why Leah Jeffries hasn’t arrived on set yet. This means that the TV series likely intends on telling the story of Lightning Thief from the beginning, starting with Percy learning about his godly parentage.
It will likely be some time before fans will be able to see any official first-look material from Percy Jackson & the Olympians. However, with Riordan on set for this project, they can rest assured that the author will be making sure it stays faithful to the original novels. He notoriously took issue with the Lightning Thief film adaptation, so this time he is much more directly involved with the shape of the entire project. With Riordan being open about the entire process of the Disney+ show, fans can expect more updates from the set all the way up until the show’s highly-anticipated release.
