According to Comicbook, during New York Comic Con, showrunners of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Dan Shotz (National Treasure) and Jonathan E. Steinberg (The Old Man) stated that season one of the series will be ‘’setting the table’’ for the franchise. The first season of the Disney+ series will adapt mostly from Rick Riordan’s (The Lost Hero) first Percy Jackson novel The Lightning Thief.
Shotz said, “We knew book one would be the first season, so we got to go on this journey of that book and know that we needed to fit it into this box, but we also needed to pace it in a way that made it feel like we were moving. It’s an adventure. It’s a ride. It’s like a journey across America. We needed to make sure that fit into this box.”
Steinberg added, “When we took this on, and I think when we first started to get to know Rick and Becky Riordan, I think the promise was made that a lot of care was going to go into this. This wasn’t really about just trying to get the book on screen or just trying to get something to market, but it was about trying to really embrace what was special about the experience people had with the books and find a way to translate that. I think everybody from the studios, from 20th to Disney+, to Rick and Becky and our team really embrace that this was going to be something that was cared for.”
According to Comicbook, the care that Steinberg mentions isn’t just adapting the source material properly but also giving each of the five volumes room to breathe as it is adapted into a series. When the franchise originally was adapted into films it failed to include many important parts from the novels as it tried to cram everything into one film. This will not be the case with the adapted series as it will take its time telling the story.
“I think part of the job was being aware of setting the table,” Steinberg said. “Making sure that everything was in the right place and that the right actors were in the right places for this to live a long life.”
“We have the luxury of having now six books to tap into,” Dan Shotz said. “We were able to look at things of what we could seed early in the first season. What could we find, characters or gods, that aren’t necessarily in the book that we want to pull up? We definitely explored all of that.”
Percy Jackson And The Olympians is scheduled to stream on Disney+ on December 20th.