Percy Jackson TV Show Must Avoid This One Mistake That Doomed the Movies

The Percy Jackson book series became arguably the first young adult book franchise to become almost as popular as Harry Potter since, well, Harry Potter’s release. Rick Riordan did a phenomenal job of adapting the Ancient Greek myths to the modern world, and teenagers all over the world fell in love with his books.

It only seemed logical that movies about Percy Jackson would be an immense success, so no expenses were spared for the first two installments. The star-studded cast, the grand picture, the visual effects — everything screamed “Look, I’m a brand new blockbuster!” However, after the second movie, the franchise was dead.

Now, there is a second chance at adapting Rick Riordan’s books, this time for small screens. Disney Plus is working on a new TV series following the original story, and while we can’t quite contain our excitement, we have to stay cautiously optimistic as Disney might make the exact same mistake the movies did — the mistake that doomed them.

In short, the movies largely disregarded major points of the source material.

But if you allow us to elaborate, we’re not even about to slander the second part, Sea of Monsters. We’d like to focus on the relationship dynamics between the characters, instead, because the movies really messed those up.

The books are very much not centered around Percy and Annabeth's romance. More than that, their relationship was evolving very gradually, and it came all the way from distrusting each other to being cautiously friendly to becoming buddies to admitting their feelings. And it took them four books to get to the last point, not one movie!

We sincerely hope that the new TV series doesn’t follow in the movies’ footsteps and make the same mistake. The Percy Jackson franchise was never about love, and if the new reboot wants to succeed, it needs to understand this better than its predecessor.