Rick Riordan expects a 2024 premiere date for new Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
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Percy Jackson fans have been getting a lot of good news lately. Author Rick Riordan is heavily involved in the upcoming Disney+ series adaptation, and a trio of fresh-faced young actors have been cast in the main roles of Percy, Annabeth Chase, and the satyr Grover. With all this news over the past few months, it's understandable that fans might wonder when they'll actually get to see the show. Riordan addressed that very question in his latest blog post.
"We are on track with our schedule, and everything is going according to plan, though we still have a long way to go before this series is ready," Riordan writes. "We have sort of, kind of, mostly finished the principal photography for 1x1 (season one/episode one) and have done a good chunk of the filming for 1x2, but principal photography just gives us the raw puzzle pieces which will then need to be put together with sound track, special effects and editing to yield a finished product. And we still have a lot of filming yet to do to get all those puzzle pieces for the whole season."
Riordan notes that he isn't speaking for Disney in an official capacity, and that his guesses about timing should not be taken as official studio announcements. But, given the "wildly unrealistic dates" he's seen going around on social media, the author wants to balance fans' expectations now that he has a better sense of how much work goes into producing TV shows — especially a show as reliant on special effects and Industrial Light & Magic's Volume stage as Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
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"Previously, I have said that my own personal best guess was sometime in 2023. I also warned you that this could definitely change," Riordan writes. "Now that I have a somewhat better understanding of the work involved, here's what I am estimating: It's probably going to take us through December or into January to film all the episodes of season one, which is roughly one month of filming per episode (eight episodes total)...That means post-production will begin in early 2023, when the pieces are fitted together, edited and augmented with all the special effects and sound. This process also takes months and months."
Riordan continues, "given all this, I think the most likely air date will probably be early 2024. Again, that's just me guessing. The actual release dates are determined by the studio and the streaming service, and have to take in hundreds of other factors like the release schedule for all Disney+ shows, timing for publicity, etc."
That might seem like a long wait, but Riordan notes that he's been waiting 15 years for a good adaptation of his beloved book series, so hopefully the time will be worth it in the end. Plus, it's not like fans of the Percy Jackson franchise will have nothing to hold them over in the meantime. His upcoming book with co-author Mark Oshiro about Nico diAngelo and Will Solace (which EW exclusively revealed last year) "has been edited and is going into production." Riordan promises more details on that will be coming soon.
Read his full blog post here.
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