Yeah two books per season sounds about right.
Although frankly as long as it was done well, I wouldn't mind a few changes to create new natural season ending points.
I get why people would be really distrusting of changes due to the films, but as long as the feel of the books is captured - changing some of the details wouldn't bother me much.
"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob
For something mythological, a high budget would be nice. Good-looking magic powers and monsters don't come cheap.
While the movie did it poorly, I'd be fine with some changes. Just keep the broad strokes of the plot, and keep everyone in character.
Two books per season also means that you could cast an actor to play 14 instead of 12 because the original 5 books would take place across 3 years instead of 5.
Ah yes, teenager casting... Ugh, this always really annoys me. I know there are child protection laws and it's harder to work with real teenagers, but I really don't like Dawson Casting. Like, have you seen a 14 year old? An actual adult, unless you find one with an incredible baby-face, is never convincing. Plus I think it generally messes up the self-image of real teenagers.
Putting kids on shows carries a lot of other things with it aside from labor laws. Kids still have to go to school, have to deal with discipline and moodiness, and the most important issue: The Stage Mom. Galactica 1980 shows the very many downsides of having a ton of kids involved with a show.
Fellow film-turned-series-adaptation-of-2000s-books A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017) dealt with that well (13 books, 3 seasons/years, 2 episodes per book, 4ish books per season). Three years is doable for a teen actor. It helps that the lead kids were rather babyfaced, although they had to Hand Wave the baby's aging.
If PJO does more than one book per season that works out behind the scenes because they don't have to cast as young and produce for as long.
Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 10th 2021 at 11:11:11 AM
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Percy Jackson though has the advantage of each book taking place a year after the previous book. So the actors aging isn't really an issue. ASOUE is super ambiguous about the timeframe covered and the whole thing is surreal enough that Sunny getting visibly older over a period of time that seems significantly shorter doesn't register properly to the audience.
Not Three Laws compliant.
I think actors being the right age when cast and then ageing between seasons is fine, that's kinda unavoidable.
I think multiple books per season could certainly work. Though I do wonder how the time would work in-universe.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Because S2 was an Immediate Sequel, they started it by saying something like "we've been waiting here for so long Sunny is now a toddler" or something like that.
You could still do a year per book. 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds are pretty indistinguishable.
Rick Riordan officially announced
that casting for the role of Peter Jackson has begun.
We are looking for an actor who can “play 12.” That allows for a range in the actual age of the actor, but the goal is to stay true to the original story and have Percy’s character age from 12 to 16 over the course of the TV series, assuming of course we are lucky enough to make all five seasons. That will depend on viewership on Disney+, which is where all of you can help!
What about the other characters?
First things first! Percy is the title character, obviously, and a lot of the other casting choices will be informed by whoever we get for Percy. I’ll let you know when we start thinking about those next steps. The “big three” roles, as you can imagine, will be the trio of Percy, Annabeth and Grover.
Is Percy a specific ethnicity?
That is not part of the casting call description. We are looking for the best person who can embody the character we all know and love from the books. As with all casting choices, we will be following Disney’s company policy, which says:
We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, gender, race and ethnicity, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law.
Can anybody audition? (Asking for a friend.)
If you wish to submit a self-tape for consideration for the role of Percy Jackson, yes, you can do that. Here is the link with all the information you need: PercyJacksonOpenCall.20thTelevision.com.
This is the only means through which unsolicited audition tapes will be considered.
Edited by XMenMutant22 on Apr 27th 2021 at 2:46:07 PM
With the cast of the PJO series being mostly white there will undoubtedly be racelifts.
I feel like they could totally do one book per season. While maybe that might be a slower pacing for book one or two, it gives you breathing room once the stories get bigger and you might really need that 10 episode count. Lightning Thief probably needs more than 5 episodes though; how many one-off locations do we have?
Medusa, Chimera, Lotus Casino, and Hades itself are ones I can think of off the top of my head. If you're taking your time laying out the pieces of your characters, just one of those could be the focus of an episode.
And now you're saving yourself a headache if you get to the Labyrinth and realize the quality is dropping because your format of 5-per-book isn't working out. Storylines could become REALLY rushed for no reason had you just planned years in advance. These books got thicker as the series went on. And what happens if Disney orders a 6th season and it goes into adapting larger and more complicated stuff?
As for the age of the actors and getting things done, one unconventional solution could be ordering 20 episodes to be delivered as two separate seasons; You film two books back to back, actors will look appropriate age for the parts, you can string that 20 episodes across 2 years, and then you're also likely to get production back up quickly once you know you've been greenlit for that second order or third/fourth season.
One of the problems first seasons oft run into is getting everyone back because the subsequent season isn't green lit by the time filming wraps but once it's aired. Which becomes less of an issue as a show continues; Season 3 can often get green lit as Season 2 is finish filming and then that production can get scheduled right away. Westworld consistently runs into this exact problem because new seasons aren't green lit until they air and the high caliber a big name production team means that it's hard to reschedule the subsequent production in because they're already signed to other projects after.
It's more of a gamble since you're paying an increased budget up front but it could help in the long term for keeping the show running while covering for that production stop gap and getting child actors back into place between parents or schooling or just simply growing up. It's also not totally unheard of as 20~ episodes of a order used to be television standard for awhile, if just those shows also tended to be less budget-per-episode.
Edited by InkDagger on Apr 27th 2021 at 9:46:06 AM
Funny I mentioned ASOUE, because a small update: one of the directors of that show, Joe Tracz (who wrote the books for the musicals Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Be More Chill, as well as creator of Dash & Lily) will be in the writer's room.
Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 14th 2021 at 4:17:50 AM
...There was a Percy Jackson musical? O.o
_(o)_
Yep. And obviously, it was far better than the movies. Plus, the songs are pretty catchy.
Edited by Ohmknight on Jul 15th 2021 at 1:39:24 AM
The Final Name
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
I have been meaning to watch the musical, but saying it's better then the movies is not that impressive. That is not a high bar to top.
Edited by Bullman on Jul 15th 2021 at 1:04:11 PM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
_(o)_
True. But this is actually coming from a person who actually liked the movies. It helped that I didnt know about the books before that. Even after reading the books, I was less angry at the movie itself and more angry at the loss of potential and the fact that it will take a while for someone else to reboot this series.
Edited by Ohmknight on Jul 16th 2021 at 12:26:40 AM
The Final Name
King of Anime
I never saw the second movie but as a fan of the books I did enjoy the first even with the changes. It's nice that we're getting a second chance though.
Blog post from RR apologizing for the lack of developments. Apparently the pitch meeting is on Friday.
Keep us in your thoughts this coming week, as we have an important meeting with top execs at Disney Studios (a tier of folks we’ve actually never talked to directly before). We will need to make our best case — one more time, with feeling! — for what this adaptation should be, why it is important, and why it is a win for all those involved.
Why is it taking so long? you are asking. Yeah, believe me, I feel that. I’ve put all my plans on “pause” for the last two years so I could devote myself entirely to wrestling with this project. Part of the issue is that Disney is a massive corporation with many moving parts. The company’s expansion is great in some ways. For instance, when they bought Fox, that opened up the possibility that we could do Percy again through Disney, since Disney now owns the rights. On the downside, this means that the company is still in the process of changing and restructuring. There are a lot of people either shifting jobs or new to the company, and the various divisions don’t always know what the other divisions are doing. (That is simply my subjective impression, as an outside observer.)
Also, happy birthday to Percy Jackson (8/18)!
Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 18th 2021 at 2:58:14 PM
Forgot to check up on this, but apparently Riordan and Disney execs had "a very positive conversation" and the leadership is "all in".
Bottom line: This is good news. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, and you all will still have a long time to wait, but Percy is a step closer to the adaptation we all want. I had mentioned at one point, maybe a year ago, that the absolutely most optimistic guess I could give you about when this show might air would be 2022. That was, as I suspected, too optimistic. Right now, we are aiming for 2023 delivery. which I think is realistic, but this is my own personal estimate and should not be taken as a firm date.
Excellent. So this is definitely not going to be like the original where the movie crew decides to phone it in.
No premiere date or casting yet but...It's actually been greenlit!
I never saw either. Are they any good?
No, they are too early in development for that. If they are ironing out budgets they are also still ironing out pacing. I was mainly responding to the sentiment in 6.