Today Rick Riordan and his wife Becky took to Twitter with a special announcement about the Disney+ streaming service and his book Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

Riordan has been working a long time on getting his Percy Jackson books onto digital screens everywhere following the successes of the films Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013). Now, at long last, it looks like the hard work has paid off.

Riordan tweeted the following announcement in his Twitter feed alongside the video:

Hey Percy Jackson fans, for the past decade, you’ve worked hard to champion a faithful on-screen adaptation of Percy Jackson’s world. Some of you have even suggested it would be a great series for Disney+. We couldn’t agree more!

We can’t say much more at this stage, but we are very excited about the idea of a live-action series of the highest quality, following the storyline of the original Percy Jackson five-book series, starting with The Lightning Thief in Season one. Rest assured that Becky and I will be involved in person in every aspect of the show. There will be much more news in the future, but for now, we have a lot of work to do!

Buckle up, demigods, it’s going to be a fantastic, exciting ride!
The original tweet from Riordan

Riordan has been in talks with Disney about a Percy Jackson series since December, occasionally boosting the #DisneyAdaptPercyJackson hashtag.

The first Percy Jackson & the Olympians book, The Lightning Thief was published in 2005 and received four sequels: The Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian. The story follows Percy Jackson, a 12-year-old boy with dyslexia and ADHD who discovers that these afflictions are actually symptoms of his not being entirely human. He is demigod: the son of a human and a Greek god. He is set on a quest to retrieve Zeus’s lightning bolt from Hades to prevent a war among the gods, a lightning bolt of which he has been accused of stealing. Subsequent books expanded the story and the world into a formidable young adult franchise.

The Percy Jackson series came about during a time in history when book publishers were looking about for the next Harry Potter. Percy Jackson hit the sweet spot. Riordan’s inspiration for the series came from telling his son bedtime stories based on Greek myths and his son’s subsequent frustration when the stories “ran out.” All together the Percy Jackson series has sold nearly 70 million copies worldwide. 

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Gene Turnbow

President of Krypton Media Group, Inc., radio personality and station manager of SCIFI.radio. Part writer, part animator, part musician, part illustrator, part programmer, part entrepreneur - all geek.