Percy Jackson author on film adaptations: “I pleaded with them not to do it”
Aux Features Percy Jackson
Adaptation is a tricky thing. A very good one can illuminate the material in a new way that feels honest and true to the source (fun fact: Fitzwilliam Darcy does not dive into a picturesque pond at any point in the novel Pride And Prejudice). But even very good adaptations often get dinged with “the book was better,” because books and movies/television shows/plays/musicals/etc. are not the same, and when you convert the former into one of the latter, by necessity you must leave some things out and make changes to others. And oh, there were certainly some changes made to the Percy Jackson story when 2010's Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and 2013's Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters were released, but the biggest problem with those films isn’t that they’re super different from the original stories. No, it’s that they’re baaaaaaad.
Rick Riordan certainly thinks so. He wrote the books, and thought the adaptation was bad enough on the page that he’s never even seen the movies.
Riordan shared his thoughts after a fan tweeted a question about a scene that seems to have been altered from the original when streaming on Disney+. Riordan’s response: “I don’t know, but clearly it’s a mistake. They should censor the entire thing. Just two hours of blank screen.”
Another fan said it was “refreshing to see that uncle Rick hates the [Percy Jackson] movies more than we do,” and Riordan pointed out that for fans, it’s just a couple of crappy movies, but for him, “it’s my life’s work going through a meat grinder when I pleaded with them not to do it.”
That “we’re gonna fix it soon” is a reference to the forthcoming Percy Jackson TV series from Disney+. In closing, Riordan notes that he doesn’t blame Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, and the rest of the cast for the shitshow:
Like Percy facing down Medusa as played by Uma Thurman, Riordan has never seen the films, but this isn’t the first time he’s shared his frustration with the screenplays. Riordan wrote about his experience on his site in 2018, even including excerpts of emails he sent to producers about his, um, qualms.
When I first read the script I’ll admit I was plunged into despair at just how bad it was. If I were intentionally trying to sabotage this project, I doubt I could have done a better job than this script. But as I began to make notes and look specifically at what was bothering me, I realized that the script could be made palatable to fans and the general movie-going audience without really changing its present scene structure, lengthening the script, or adding new sets that would increase the budget. I am choosing to take heart in your assurance that this script is not finished. That is one thing we can agree on: It needs help.
Hopefully the TV series will do a better job of capturing the spirit and tone of the books than these two films. If not, Percy Jackson fans will simply have to content themselves with the fact that Riordan spent the weekend tweeting out titles by trans and nonbinary authors, a nice contrast with some other people.
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86 Comments
Children’s librarian working in the Bronx here: Rick Riordan is a saint. While James Patterson gets ghostwriters to do all his books and gives very little credit, Riordan’s “Rick Riordan Presents” is the inverse: rather than keep writing books about other mythologies and lore, he recruited authors who grew up with this lore and coached them on writing for kids, then used his name to give them a platform but otherwise, obviously, gave them all the credit.So now instead of even more European mythology stuff getting out there, we’ve got Korean folklore sci-fi in Dragon Pearl and Mesoamerican mythos adventures in Storm Runner, and Tristan Strong, which covers how the African diaspora affects American folklore. Riordan had all the opportunity to make an empire with ghostwriters but instead he’s made it his mission to get diverse voices out there in an industry that’s often super harsh to diverse authors and has struggled to produce diverse books for diverse readers. Young readers who love fantasy and adventure deserve to be seen in their books as much as kids who love reading more realistic fiction and Riordan has been the man on this.(Also the Percy Jackson books are better than they have any right to be.)
JK Rowling is the children’s author we deserve. Rick Riordan is the children’s author we need.And thank you for this perspective. Feel-good stuff.
I have not read the books myself but from what I understand Rick Riordan’s books make much more sense then Harry Potter. He seems to have a very good grasp on the logic of his universe and the world building and uses it well. JK Rowlings, on the other hand, just throws a few random latin words together and says “Its a new spell that fixes everything” anytime Harry and the Gang needed it. Even if that spell or power or item would just be overpowered and a fix all for everything. See the fact that Hermione can literally time travel with a magic item in book 3 and how no one ever uses that again in the later books. When pointed out JK wrote some crap about them being rare and controlled by the Ministry of Magic, which doesn’t explain why a teacher gave one to a student so she could take more classes. Don’t even get me started on how stupid the rules of guidditch are.
Ah yes Guidditch, the American version of Quidditch, localized entirely in New Jersey circa 2010.
“‘Ey I’m flyin’ hea!” “Ooh!”
Ehn. Riordan writes a bunch of good scenes and calls it a book. That works for movies, but novels need more connective tissue.
While the series as a whole doesn’t hold up, there is something really special about that first book. In my experience, when a six year old finishes that first Harry Potter book, they always end up crying because it’s the most beautiful thing they have ever experienced (in their long, grizzled lives XD) and begging for a new book because all they want to do is read.
As a fellow librarian I echo your sentiments and I have to add every book from his imprint has been excellent. I never have to sell them, kids see Rick Riordan and it’s an automatic yes. I just read the amazing Paola Santiago and the River of Tears ARC and I cannot wait to share it with my kids.
Oh yeah, Paola Santiago is nuts!Not a Rick Riordan, but if you haven’t read A Wish in the Dark yet you absolutely must! Thai-inspired low fantasy the blends Avatar (the airbender not the alien) and class warfare. Book of the year so far, even before urban protests became a major part of the year, and it’s even more timely now!
Wait. It does seem Patterson does write a obscene number of books in a short amount of time so ghostwrites make sense but I thought that was usually relegated to non-fiction like autobiographies or things of a similar nature. How does that work?
He does it for everything. Sometimes he puts the “co-author” (aka the author) in small letters under his, but if he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t. He’s done a ton of philanthropy for indie bookstores to keep the PR good, and that’s really great and all, but dude’s a crook.(There are bigger crooks out there so it’s not like I’ve got the energy to hate the guy given the number of actual villains out there, but his style rubs me the wrong way.)
I mean does he have an outline of ideas and a writer writes a book based off of it or is it more of a Talisman type thing like Stephen King and Peter Strab or Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child thing but he doesn’t give them enough credit?
He writes maybe a sentence-long concept according to a few friends in publishing.
Something…. Something…. Michael Caine…….
Counterpoint: I enjoyed the hell out of the movies and usually find myself watching them whenever the come on TV (esp. Lightning Thief). Cranky author is just cranky that books and movies are different.Also, I doubt he’s disappointed enough with the movies for him to give back the money he made.
I read the books and really liked them. So when I saw they were being made into movies I was actually excited… And then I saw these things. Question – if the people making the movie hate the source material enough that they want to change everything from the fundamentals all the way to the plot points…. why not just make their own story rather than basing it on a book they aren’t following?Adaptations between the source material and a new medium is expected and a good thing. But these movies basically took the books, kept a few names and then tossed everything else out.
The obvious answers is that the IP has a built-in audience that the studio won’t have to really do much marketing to attract. A totally new movie series that basically has the same premise would be called out for ripping off whatever popular book series.
Sure, but when they do a terrible job with the adaptation they don’t end up with a series – they end up with 1, maybe 2 movies with disappointing numbers instead. If it was just “these kids don’t know any better, I can phone it in,” that would be naive, since there’s way more series-starter-hopefuls out there than actual series (The Dark is Rising, Airbender, Percy Jackson, probably this Artemis Fowl movie by the looks of the trailers). Something like Harry Potter, where they adapted the whole thing with happy fans, is much rarer.
You’d think that producers think that way, but clearly they don’t. Essentially they get excited for an adaptation because the source material has a built-in audience and then with few exceptions they screw up the story in a desperate attempt to appeal to all possible viewers. If they were cooks, they’d be buying a really great hamburger cafe and then saying, “you know what the kids like? Dessert. Let’s take out the beef patties and stick some ice cream in there, and mush it all together so there’s no texture.” Hollywood almost always fails dismally even at adapting comics and foreign movies, where 95% can be lifted directly from the source.
Oh, that example is so gross! But, probably pretty accurate. It’s a dumb, self-defeating way for them to approach it, but never let it be said that the folks making decisions at those levels have to be smart.
To be fair to the producers, these movies often make a ton of money. A lot of people out there seem happy to consume mushy ice cream burgers.
*looks up at sign for my new eatery McBen&Jerry’s, punches fist through straw hat*
I think to a certain extent studios are motivated by defense — they are afraid of another studio locking up all of the hot titles and exhausting the market, so they will throw some money around on options and full rights to avoid getting locked out.
And sometimes I think log rolling takes over — if they buy the rights to a series, they feel obligated to shop for screenwriters. Some exec starts complaining about Harry Potter making money for Warner, better hire a director. Now you’ve dropped a couple million and Disney is moving forward on Narnia, you’d better have some stars optioned and Uma’s agent is saying if you want her for another movie, he wants it to be a three picture deal so now you’re committed to her as a result of someone else’s project….
Exactly. 3 great examples. Jumper, Wanted, Bourne Identity. In the case of Bourne Identity. They did a good job with most of those movies but they were nothing like the books.I was very disappointed in Jumper and Wanted. Just keep a few names and few core things and everything else they changed.Jumper goes a step further with the author taking a character from the movie and creating a full story of him in that world. Which wasn’t great.Then you have the youtube Impulse show. In this case, they only kept the power of “jumping” but everything else changed. However, as long as I disassociated the books from the show, the show was actually enjoyable.I know there are a ton of other examples out there. These are the ones that immediately popped into my head.
My biggest disappointment was World War Z. Someone finally does something fresh and interesting with the increasingly tired zombie genre, and Pitt and company throw 90% of it overboard to make a rote (and mostly boring or silly) action film.
Would you have really wanted a straight live-action adaptation of Wanted? I mean, the movie we got was lousy, but at least it wasn’t as toxic as the comic.
I know it was super dark. I think it’s possible they could’ve done something a bit more closer to the source. But yes, only having him tell off his boss instead of raping her was a good choice not to include.
Obviously part of it is $$, because something that already has a following has a higher turnout, but that only helps you on the first movie – it doesn’t get you a whole franchise unless a good number of those fans are happy (eg, they probably wanted to get a Harry Potter number of movies out of this, at least, not just 2 w mediocre box office). I think the subtler thing is that, when they’re just making a movie with $ signs in their eyes, they don’t have a good enough understanding of what makes the property special, what draws in the fans, to ensure that those elements transfer well. Heck, even original creators often lose track of that sort of thing over time (*cough* George Lucas *cough*)
I was frankly surprised they finally shat out the last Maze Runner movie, presumably out of contractual obligation.
Obviously part of it is $$, because something that already has a following has a higher turnout, but that only helps you on the first movie – it doesn’t get you a whole franchise unless a good number of those fans are happyAs a Star Trek fan, I can tell you that media execs have no cognitive problem with deciding that they can love a franchise’s name recognition and trademarks, and hate (or at the very least, not give a damn about) its actual content and fans. What they really want (and try to do, unless the author keeps a high level of control over adaptations, like Rowling did) is trade on the books’ name recognition to hook a larger audience that’s maybe heard of the books but never read them, as well as an international audience that might be unfamiliar with the books, but can be drawn in with action and effects. The international audience is often at odds with book adaptations, because the international audience tends to go for movies that are heavy on action and low on dialogue and verbal subtlety, while books are…all words. The tone of Riordan’s writing is something I don’t imagine would translate very well for the Chinese market.
Man, that’s an awfully hacky cough you’ve got there.
The answer to this question is, sadly, you. Understand, I don’t mean to disparage you in any way. All I’m saying is that as a fan of the books, you (and others like you) are a built-in potential audience for a film. You provide a safety net of likely movie-goers that an original film or franchise would not have. You are the reason an adaptation of an existing (and successful) work is always a less-risky (which is not the same as “better”) bet for film producers.
Agreed. But that does only work once. Take the attempt Disney made at the Chronicles of Narnia – while they were superficially similar to the books they also changed the spirit of them enough that Disney didn’t do well with them…
Ask the folks who made the GI Joe movies.
At least with GI Joe there is a defense – since that was a toy line long before it was a series it’s a property that invites people playing with it. But yeah, I get your gist.
But these movies basically took the books, kept a few names and then tossed everything else out.That’s been the formula for mythology-infused movies ever since there’s been mythology-infused movies. Troy was what happens when Hollywood skims The Iliad and thinks: “This stuff is a bunch of crap! We can do better.” Clash of the Titans involved a few Greek names and characters, but it was monumentally disinterested in the myths themselves. My guess with the Percy Jackson novels is they saw the word “mythological” and decided, as with previous adaptations, just to rewrite the shit out of it.You’d think that somehow, somewhere, someone would think, “You know, those other movies kind of sucked, maybe there’s something to the original stories that we should seek to preserve.” And yet, we just get another half-assed “modernization” that makes everyone look like an asshole.
Troy was meant to be a high-concept “realist” take on the Iliad, not a half-assed compromised take on mythology, like Wrath of the Titans—itself a reboot of a movie that was more a tribute to 1950s and 60s movies based on Greek myth than to the myths themselves. Some of Troy’s ideas are interesting (Achilles as the Michael Jordan of Bronze Age warfare rather than a literally invulnerable superhuman) others less so (Priam as a religious zealot whose faith destroys his kingdom) and some just break the story completely (the Trojan War goes from a decade-long siege to maybe a week and a half from the landing on the beach to the sack of Troy).
For me the most vexing part of Troy was that they thought it was a good idea to turn Paris and Helen into a doomed romance, when the whole goddamned point of the Iliad was that Paris was an asshole, Helen was a narcissist, and the whole war was for nothing. The question “why do we fight; what meaning do we find in what we do” is central to the original work, and Troy’s answer that “we fight because they’re just so sweet together!” took a complex, ambiguous work of art and turned it into garbage. IMHO, of course, but seriously. That movie was garbage.
Absolutely. I’m 95% certain that the reason they went with that take was to try to keep the audience from turning against the Trojans, which is another one of the places where the gods wind up being essential to the original story working. Because in the mythology Paris is an asshole, but he’s also a mortal caught in a quarrel between gods. We hold it against the Trojans less than if his affair with Helen was just the plain old poor judgment of a love-smitten member of a royal family (which is what we get in the movie).Ugh. Just thinking too hard about Troy has guaranteed I’m going to spend some part of the evening reading George O’Connor’s OIympians graphic novels in order to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.
“Man, these stories that have resonated with humanity over several centuries are shit! I’m confident that the screenwriter for ‘Sex Party 2: Sex in Vegas’ will do a far superior job.”
Well, I’d argue that the Harry Potter movies, while not uniformally good at it, showed that a faithful adaptation can work.
There are two other factors that no one’s touched on yet that I would throw in:- After a producer has obtained the rights to rights to a property, if they decide to give it up and instead to develop their own similar-but-original property, then you can bet the farm that – if the new project has any success – they will be sued by the original property’s owners, who will likely win; and,- As everyone has noted, this is a *very* popular book series. If your competitor either gets the rights before you do, or, worse yet, gets them away from you because they outbid you or you gave them up, and then they have success with it… then you’re seen as a chump and a loser. In this town, fear of that outcome drives many, many decisions.
So did he plead with them before or after they backed up a Brink’s truck into his driveway? See: George Lucas.
This is kinda different because he is complaining that he thought they were awful just based on the scripts and not the finished product and they were doing something he couldn’t have where Lucas could have gone ahead and made more Star Wars movies without selling to Disney, but there is definitely some of “I sold them the rights to make a movie out of my book and then they made a movie out of my book! How dare them!”
I think in these cases it’s more “I sold them the rights to make a movie out of my book and then they did a shit job but I signed the contract already.”Don’t know what his contract looked like, of course, but there are plenty of times where what the author expects when they sign away the rights and what they actually get are very different, and they can do very little to influence it.
It sounds like Riordan was surprised by the experience. I expect authors who have sold the rights to more than one book just assume it will be a shitshow.
Writers got to eat. I’m sure. he didn’t just start waving his book under movie exec noses screaming MAKE THIS A MOVIE! I would assume that his publisher had a great deal of control over the sale of the movie rights, and his total creative input allowance to the adaptation amounted to being told to have an intern throw his ideas directly into the trash.
I wonder if authors get paid less if they demand more creative control. That would increase the risk to the studio since not all good novel authors are good screenwriters or consultants and he might say a lot of “you can’t do that to my baby!” Don;t get me wrong, Hollywood is plenty capable of screwing things up on their own, but I’m sure plenty of projects have been derailed by author involvement too.
I don’t think it’s a matter of getting paid less, so much as a matter of getting paid at all. It’s a rare author that gets any creative control, and usually only heavy hitters who have been around a long time like King, multi-disciplinary creators who have also done the circuit like Gaiman, King, and authors who already have GDPs higher than some countries by the time their books get optioned, like Rowling. Other than that, I assume you either hand it over for a bag of cash and walk away, or it doesn’t happen.
Fox bought the rights before the first book was even published and he basically would get nothing unless they decided to make a movie. Studios buy unpublished books all the time for chump change and the author makes nothing unless the studio decides to make a movie from it someday. Authors also have zero creative control in these types of contracts.
Hate to butt in, Doc, but I got another profile for you to report. Already flagged one of its posts. https://kinja.com/dremiliolizardoa17
Someone else saw told me about one, so I already reported it. If you keep seeing it and it doesn’t disappear in a day or so let me know and I can report it again. Thanks.
I will do so, sir. Best to you.
Fox bought the rights before the first book was even published and he got paid basically nothing for them. This isn’t unusual. Studios will often buy rights to unpublished books on the cheap if there is sufficient buzz around them. He would’ve made some decent money if the movies did well though.
“And it turns out the beach house I bought with the money isn’t even that nice!”
I always assumed the Percy Jackson books were ripoffs of the Harry Potter series. Hero with a name with the same syllabic pattern, cover art looks the same…from Wikipedia it seems the books start when Percy Jackson is 12, and he finds out he is special all of a sudden…Wikipedia is also telling me he has one male and one female close friend…is there an arc villain through the books who wants to destroy him?
It’s shockingly good. I was a little too old for em but read them as an adult in my bookstore days, expecting fun but forgettable pulp, and it’s way better than I expected. Riordan captures the first person POV really well, even changing things up as Percy gets older (like, in the fourth book he’s sarcastic all the time to an annoying degree, because he’s fourteen and fourteen-year-olds sorta suck).Obviously influenced by Harry Potter in the way all kid’s books have been since the 90s, but very different in execution with a way more compelling lead: we see more into his head, and he’s a way more active character going on adventures instead of being a kid trying to just live his life while Wizard Hitler keeps trying to kill him. Plus it’s definitely more “American” than HP, for better and worse. I’d recommend for sure.
yeah, i can’t get into anything that is “young person finds out they’re special/have powers & is trained to fight yada yada yada” anymore. it’s all so reductive. & don’t even get me started on anything with an elf in it…
If it’s not your bag, it’s not your bag, but it’s a good read if you can handle that narrative (especially because we see concrete positives and negatives: for instance, as a demigod he’s hardwired to understand Ancient Greek, which means he’s misdiagnosed as having serious reading disorders because English lettering makes his head hurt). It’s also a series that has a chosen one and the chosen one isn’t the main character, which is something I’m really surprised I haven’t seen more of because it’s a fascinating take on a tired tropes.
Interesting. But *is* there a Magic Hitler looking to kill him?
Not only no, but it takes expectations you have from Westernized views of religion and subverts them by reminding us that Greek mythology had very different stances in terms of how gods work.
Not really, its more machinations of Gods and demigods and different factions trying to gain power. Something else that is kind of interesting about Percy Jackson is that there is not alot of 100% evil characters like Wizard Hitler, more often its either wronged people resorting to extremes or conflicts of ideology or grudges, and there’s a strong streak of characterization throughout the series, wheras HP definitely felt like it had Characters Allowed To Be People and Plot Devices/Jokes
Percy’s relationship with his mom is (if I recall–read them when they first came out) a huge part of the books and really well done.
For sure, considering the whole demigod thing means it’s inherently fascinating to see what the human parent is like. (Plus it’s so great that he isn’t a child of the Main God in the pantheon.)
Yeah, if you’re going to use that broad of a brush then everything is a ripoff, including Harry Potter.
HP is more of a pastiche of better material boiled down into super easy to read books rather than a straight ripoff imho.
I agree. *I* wouldn’t call Harry Potter a ripoff. But I also wouldn’t call Percy Jackson an HP ripoff.
Now I’m wondering what Disney could have censored — it’s a crappily bland movie all around.
As someone who’s written a fantasy novel myself, I have to say that if there’s ever a crappy movie made of it, I wouldn’t mind at all. It really seems like a win/win position: either the movie is good and the whole franchise is that much better, or the fans of the book get angry about how much the movie sucks and a bunch more people start thinking “What exactly is so good about this book that there’s this level of anger over it? Maybe I should check it out.”
You miss the more likely bunch who haven’t read the book, see the movie some night on cable, and think “Woof! That author must suck!” and never thinks about it again?This was pretty much my opinion of Rick Riordan between seeing as much as I could stand of the first Percy Jackson movie, and years later when my kids kept asking me to get them Riordan’s books, and I finally read a couple of them. I wouldn’t have imagined how witty the books are based on the movie.
hey, you sell the rights for big money, you lose control & know that going in. he can complain all he wants…all the way to the bank. unhappy with how the movie might turn out? don’t sell the rights. simple.
A lot of people sell the rights to their books before they have real negotiating power and/or have competent representation. I wouldn’t make any assumptions about how much money he got, particularly if they locked down the options early after the first book’s release.
I don’t know about him, but there are a lot of agents who range from lazy to compromised to downright rotten. You can fire one after you get your bearings in the business, but at that point any contracts you’ve signed are almost impossible to get out of.
I thought the movies were fine! Nothing groundbreaking, but all in all a decent way to spend a couple hours with your kids.
Can we get Alexandra Daddario in a good movie? She is always great but in terrible films. Get a new agent Alex!
But she was great in True Detective in all kind of ways…
Alexandra Daddario is a delight!
I’ve still never forgiven the filmmakers who butchered The Dark Is Rising book(s). I’d love a Netflix series version of that property because it can’t be worse.
The first movie was not the worse thing ever but man is that second movie bad. I never read the books to compare it to but neither were that great. It felt like budget Harry Potter
The first movie was chock full of stars in supporting roles around the not-incredibly-great kid actors. The second one was like, “We can get you a few days of Stanley Tucci, and maybe a Nathan Fillion cameo. Oh, and I heard you couldn’t bring Brosnan back. You know who’s a lot like Pierce Brosnan? The guy who played Giles on Buffy! I heard they were even looking at him for Bond…until he landed the Buffy role, of course.”
The text on his blog is centered. CENTERED. So I am naturally leery of his taste choices. [But he’s right about the stuff he says. That first movie was a real misstep on every level.]
I hadn’t read the Percy Jackson books by the time I saw The Lightning Thief (I have since then), so it was interesting judging the film from a non-fan perspective. I remember thinking at the time…
– “This is The Sorceror’s Stone. Yeah, I know they got Chris Columbus, but the beats of this plot are The Sorceror’s Stone. Preeetty sure the original book didn’t just blindly rip-off The Sorceror’s Stone.”
– “Wow do these adult actors not care. Pure paycheck role.”
– “Was Grover this obnoxious in the book?” (He wasn’t)
Never read the books but the movies were pretty decent.
If the Internet was really as woke as it claimed, Riordan would sell better than anyone.But while some YA authors just seem to pass the time pissing on each other or chasing random college students down for lukewarm reviews or having cancel-fests, he just writes.