Rick Riordan offers a casting update for Grover and Annabeth in the upcoming Percy Jackson series. Riordan is the author of the best-selling young-adult novel series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians. The series follows the titular teenager as he discovers he’s the son of the Greek god Poseidon and embarks on a dangerous quest to prevent the Titans from destroying the 21st century-world. Along with Percy, the series features two other protagonists – Grover Underwood, a satyr, and Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena.
Percy Jackson has already been adapted into two feature films by 20th Century Fox, 2010’s The Lightning Thief and 2013’s Sea of Monsters, which starred the likes of Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, and Brandon T. Jackson as the main trio. Both installments were successful at the box office, though they failed to fully win over fans of Riordan’s books with a proper handling of the source material. This led to development of another adaptation for Disney+ which Riordan is heavily involved in. The series just found its Percy Jackson in Walker Scobell, who is coming off a breakout performance in Netflix’s The Adam Project.
In addition to announcing Scobell as Percy Jackson, Riordan also offered a casting update for the characters of Grover and Annabeth. On his personal website, the Percy Jackson author revealed that Scobell has been doing “numerous chemistry reads” with candidates for the other two leads since being cast in January 2022. Riordan concluded his comment by stating he is “confident those two roles are getting very close to being finalized and announced.”
Based on Riordan’s update, it sounds like Annabeth and Grover’s castings will be announced very soon. The Percy Jackson author has been kind enough to document the development of the Disney+ series on his website with frequent updates, also revealing the Percy Jackson series is scheduled to start filming in Vancouver on June 1. Therefore, expect these major casting announcements to be made before then, if not by the end of this month.
With Riordan heavily involved as a writer and creative director, which includes having a say in casting, Percy Jackson‘s Disney+’s adaptation is in very good hands. The choice of Scobell for Percy is certainly a good sign for this adaptation. His performance in The Adam Project has been very well received, and his casting here is sure to create only more buzz. Veteran directors like James Bobin, Anders Engstrom, and Jet Wilkinson have also come aboard the series. With Riordan providing a window into the development process, it sure appears Disney+’s adaptation is shaping up to be a lot better than the first.
