‘Percy Jackson’ Strikes Back: How Rick Riordan Defied Fox’s Failed Movies, Fought Racist Trolls and Finally Returned to Hollywood for Disney+ Series
variety.comRick Riordan published“Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief ” in 2005. The book introduces 12-year-old Percy, who discovers that the monsters and demon-eyed teachers who have plagued him his whole life aren’t figments of his imagination: He’s a demigod, it turns out — the child of a human woman and the water god Poseidon — and the Greek myths he grew up learning about are real.
To empower his son, Haley, Riordan positioned Percy’s ADHD and dyslexia as strengths: They came from his battle instincts and his innate ability to read ancient Greek.
Five books and 18 years later, Percy is a full-fledged hero, whose story will get a definitive screen adaptation when the TV series of the same name hits Disney+ on Dec.
20. Between then and now, Riordan managed to quit his day job as “Percy Jackson” bloomed into a full literary ecosystem. There are two sequel series narrated by other characters, “The Heroes of Olympus” and “The Trials of Apollo,” made up of five books each, plus companion books, graphic novels and, as of September, new books where Percy is the central character.
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