In 2004 20th Century Fox acquired the film rights to the book series. In 2007 Chris Columbus was hired to direct. Filming began April 2009 in Vancouver. Some shots were filmed in Tennessee and Las Vegas, and some exterior scenes were shot in New York.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was released theatrically in the United States on February 12, 2010, by 20th Century Fox.[5] The film received mixed reviews from critics, with criticism for the poor grasp of its source material and its script, but praise for Lerman and Jackson's performances, visual effects, and action sequences. The film grossed $226.4 million worldwide against a production budget of $95 million.[4] It was released on June 29, 2010 on DVD[6] and Blu-ray Disc.[7] A video game based on the film was released for Nintendo DS on February 11, 2010. A sequel, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, was released on August 7, 2013.
Plot
At the top of the Empire State Building, Zeus meets his brother Poseidon. Zeus accuses Poseidon's demigod son, Percy Jackson, of stealing his master lightning bolt. Poseidon reminds him that Percy is unaware of his true identity. However, Zeus declares that unless the bolt is returned to Mount Olympus before midnight of the Summer Solstice, war will be waged between all the gods.
16-year-old Percy struggles with dyslexia and ADHD. On a school trip to the MOMA, he is attacked by Alecto, a Fury masquerading as his substitute English teacher Mrs. Dodds, who demands the bolt.
Percy's best friend Grover Underwood and his Latin teacher Mr. Brunner help scare off Alecto. His teacher gives Percy a very powerful cosmic weapon which looks like a pen, and instructs Grover to take him to Camp Half-Blood — a secret sanctuary for demigod children on Long Island, leaving behind his mother Sally's abusive husband and Percy's stepfather, Gabe Ugliano.
On the way there in Sally's car, they are attacked by the Minotaur, who seemingly kills Percy's mother. Percy discovers the pen is a magical sword, and uses it to fight off the Minotaur, killing it with its own horn.
Waking up three days later, Percy learns he is Poseidon’s son, Grover is a satyr and Percy’s protector, and Mr. Brunner is Chiron, a centaur. He starts coming into his latent demigod powers, which include hydrokinesis and healing, and meets other demigods, including Annabeth Chase, Athena's daughter; and the camp's leader Luke Castellan, Hermes's son.
Percy is visited by his uncle Hades's apparition, who reveals that the Minotaur abducted Sally to the Underworld to trade for the bolt. Defying Chiron's orders, Percy sets out for the Underworld with Grover and Annabeth.
Luke gives Percy a map with the location of three green pearls belonging to Hades' wife (and Percy's aunt) Persephone, which will allow them to escape the Underworld. He also gives him a pair of flying winged Converse All-Stars stolen from Hermes, and Luke's favorite shield. Meanwhile, Percy is declared missing.
At a garden center in New Jersey, with help from Grover and Annabeth, Percy manages to decapitate Medusa and takes the first pearl from her corpse. At the Parthenon in Nashville, Percy uses the shoes to retrieve the second pearl from the crown of a statue of Athena there, and Grover kills a Hydra with Medusa's head.
The trio arrives at the Lotus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas to obtain the third pearl; however, they forget their mission after eating lotus flowers, the effects of which cause them to lose their sense of time. Percy snaps out of the spell after hearing the voice of Poseidon through telepathy telling him not to eat any more flowers.
Percy frees Grover and Annabeth from the flowers' effects; they locate the final pearl in the casino and escape. Unfortunately, they only have one day left to prevent the war, as they were in the casino for almost a week. They discover that the Underworld is in Hollywood so race there.
With all three pearls, Percy, Grover, and Annabeth enter the portal to the Underworld upon arriving in Hollywood. There, Hades finds the bolt hidden inside Luke's shield, revealing that Luke was the thief all along.
Hades tries to kill the trio, but Persephone turns on him in retaliation for imprisoning her and gives the bolt to Percy. As they only have three pearls, Grover remains behind, while Percy, Annabeth, and Sally teleport to the Empire State Building, the secret entrance to Olympus. However, before they can enter, they are ambushed by Luke, who reveals that he stole the bolt to demolish Olympus and establish the demigods (and himself) as Olympus' new rulers.
After a battle across Manhattan, Percy defeats Luke, returns the bolt to Zeus, and reconciles with his father. Having been reunited with Grover, Percy and Annabeth continue to train back at Camp Half-Blood.
In a mid-credits scene, Sally has kicked Gabe out of their apartment. When going to the locked refrigerator to get a drink, he ignores Percy's written warning to not open it, breaks it open, and is turned into stone by Medusa's head, which he kept inside.
Stefanie von Pfetten as Demeter, goddess of agriculture, fertility, and the harvest, sister of Zeus and mother of Persephone
Dimitri Lekkos as Apollo, god of the sun, light, knowledge, healing, plague and darkness, the arts, music, poetry, prophecy, archery, and twin brother of Artemis
Ona Grauer as Artemis, goddess of the hunt, virginity, the moon, and all animals, and twin sister of Apollo
Serinda Swan as Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, wife of Hephaestus and lover of Ares
Conrad Coates as Hephaestus, god of fire, forge, blacksmiths, craftsmen and husband of Aphrodite
Ray Winstone as Ares, god of war, lover of Aphrodite (uncredited)
Luke Camilleri as Dionysus, god of wine, celebrations, ecstasy, and theatre
Pierce Brosnan as Mr. Brunner/Chiron, a centaur who is a high school teacher and also trains heroes at Camp Half-Blood, the immortal son of Kronos and brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, and Hera
In June 2004, 20th Century Fox acquired the film rights to the book.[13] In April 2007, Chris Columbus was hired to direct.[14] Filming began in April 2009 in Vancouver,[10] and Mammoth Studios in Burnaby was selected to be the studio.[15] Portions of the film were shot at the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, that has a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens.[16] The Lotus Casino sequence was filmed at The Westin Bayshore in Vancouver in June 2009, and additional scenes of Percy, Grover and Annabeth driving to and from the casino were shot on the Las Vegas Strip and in front of the Fremont Street Experience. Filming wrapped up on the morning of July 25, 2009, in Mission, British Columbia. Additional exterior scenes were filmed on location in Brooklyn, New York during the first week of August 2009.[17]Digital intermediate work began in San Francisco in November 2009.[18]Christophe Beck composed the score.[19] Columbus has stated that the cast was chosen specifically with sequels in mind. "I think with Percy Jackson it was a matter of finding the right cast to fit into these roles, sort of the perfect cast for these roles, because hopefully, God willing, we will go on to do other Percy Jackson films and you want the cast to grow with their characters".[20]
During production, Riordan was disappointed with the changes made to the story and warned the studio that it would likely alienate the readers of the book series that it was depending on to buy tickets. In two emails commenting at length on a draft of the script that he posted to his blog in 2018, he specifically warned the studio that trying to make the story more attractive to a teenage audience by aging the characters and including some profanity in the script might move a significant portion of the books' readers to leave the theater in disgust long before the movie ended. He also felt the introduction of Persephone's pearls as a plot device made no sense, having no basis in mythology and distracting Percy from his goal of recovering the stolen lightning.[21]
Reception
Box office
The film opened on February 12, 2010, in 3,356 theaters; its opening weekend box-office results totaled $31.2 million[4] in the U.S., finishing at #3 below The Wolfman, which opened at #2 with $31.5 million and below Valentine's Day, which opened at #1 with $56.3 million.[22] The film had a strong opening weekend for its genre, posting the highest opening weekend for a fantasy film not from the Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, or Lord of the Rings series.[23] As of September 14, 2010, it grossed a total of $88.8 million in the U.S. and Canada with $137.7 million elsewhere in the world, bringing it to $226.5 million.[4]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 49% based on reviews from 150 critics, with an average score of 5.30/10. The site's consensus reads: "Though it may seem like just another Harry Potter knockoff, Percy Jackson benefits from a strong supporting cast, a speedy plot, and plenty of fun with Greek mythology."[24] On Metacritic it has a score of 47 out of 100, based on 31 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[25] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on a scale from A+ to F.[26]
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described the film as "standard Hollywood product... unadventurous and uninteresting".[27] The reviewer for The Washington Post thought "the movie suffers by taking itself a little too seriously. It's not just that it's a lot less funny than the book. It's also a lot less fun".[28] On BBC Radio 5, Mark Kermode criticized the similarity of the film to director Chris Columbus's Harry Potter films, likening it to a Harry Potter parody book and dubbing it Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins.[29] This comment later sparked a satirical fan creation with precisely that title, narrated by Stephen Fry.[30]
The author, Rick Riordan, publicly criticized the final script. He revealed email recommendations for script changes with names redacted. Regarding future support for a reboot Riordan said, "In the future, if some project actually does get underway, I may not be able to comment on it for contractual reasons, but you can tell how I'm feeling about it by what I do or don’t say. Am I talking about it? Promoting it? Sharing cool things? I am probably happy. Am I completely ignoring it and never mentioning it on social media? Yeah . . . that’s probably not a good sign. For instance, check out my website, rickriordan.com. Do you see any indication there that the Percy Jackson movies ever existed? No. No, you do not."[31][32][33] He also shared in the same email “The script as a whole is terrible. I don't simply mean that it deviates from the book, though certainly it does that to point of being almost unrecognizable as the same story. Fans of the books will be angry and disappointed.”[34]
A video game based on the film developed by Griptonite Games and published by Activision was released exclusively for Nintendo DS on February 11, 2010.[40] GameZone's Michael Splechta gave it a 6/10, saying "Percy Jackson might not make a splash when it comes to movie tie-in games, but fans of turn-based combat might find some redeeming qualities in this otherwise bare-bones game."[41] On Metacritic, the game has a score of 56 out of 100 based on 6 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[42]
Home media
The film was released on June 29, 2010 on DVD[6] and Blu-ray.[7] The movie itself charted at the top of the charts (DVD sales) with $13,985,047 in revenue in its first week.[43] As of October 2011, the movie had sold 2,087,368 DVDs with over $37 million in sales.[44]
The Lightning Thief is a 2005 American fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology, the first children's novel by Rick Riordan. The opening installment in the series Percy Jackson & the Olympians, the book was recognized among the year's best for children. Riordan followed the novel with various books and spin-off series, spawning the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles media franchise.
The Titan's Curse is an American fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology written by Rick Riordan. It was released on May 1, 2007, and is the third novel in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series and the sequel to The Sea of Monsters. It is about the adventures of the 14-year-old demigod Percy Jackson as he and his friends go on a dangerous quest to rescue his 14-year-old demigod friend Annabeth Chase and the Greek goddess Artemis, who have both been kidnapped by the Titan Atlas.
The Sea of Monsters is an American fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology written by Rick Riordan and published in 2006. It is the second novel in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series and the sequel to The Lightning Thief. This book chronicles the adventures of thirteen-year-old demigod Percy Jackson as he and his friends rescue his satyr friend Grover from the Cyclops Polyphemus and save Camp Half-Blood from a Titan's attack by bringing the Golden Fleece to cure Thalia's poisoned pine tree.
Camp Half-Blood Chronicles is a media franchise created by author Rick Riordan, encompassing three five-part novel series, two short-story collections, two myth anthology books, a stand-alone short story, three crossover short stories, an essay collection, multiple guides, seven graphic novels, two films, a video game, a musical, and other media. Set in the modern world, it focuses on groups of demigod teenagers, and features many characters from Greek and Roman mythology. The first series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, follows the adventures of a boy named Percy Jackson at a summer camp for Greek demigods. The second series, The Heroes of Olympus, introduces several more lead characters and a second camp for Roman demigods named Camp Jupiter. The third series, The Trials of Apollo, follows the now-mortal god Apollo, with appearances by many characters from the first and second series.
The Last Olympian is a fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology by Rick Riordan, published on May 5, 2009. It is the fifth novel of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series and is the direct sequel to The Battle of the Labyrinth. The Last Olympian revolves around the demigod Percy Jackson as he leads his friends in a last stand to protect Mount Olympus.
Perseus "Percy" Jackson is a fictional character, the title character and narrator of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. He is also one of seven main protagonists of the sequel series The Heroes of Olympus, appearing in every book except The Lost Hero, and appears in the Trials of Apollo series, making him one of the few characters to appear in all three series of the Camp Half-Blood chronicles. He has also been a narrator and protagonist in Riordan's Greco-Roman/Egyptian crossover stories, part of the Demigods and Magicians collection. The character serves as the narrator in Percy Jackson's Greek Gods and Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes, also by Rick Riordan.
The Demigod Files is a collection of short stories by Rick Riordan published on February 10, 2009. It is a supplementary book to series Percy Jackson & the Olympians. It mainly contains three short stories, titled "Percy Jackson and the Stolen Chariot", "Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon", and "Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades". It is set between the fourth and fifth novels, The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian.
The Heroes of Olympus is a pentalogy of fantasy-adventure novels written by American author Rick Riordan. The novels detail a conflict between Greek demigods, Roman demigods, and Gaea. In the fourth book of the series, there is also a fight against Tartarus, which, in Greek mythology, was the darkest and deepest point of the Underworld.
The familiar name and large size of the Titans have made them dramatic figures suited to market-oriented popular culture.
The Mark of Athena is an American fantasy-adventure novel written by Rick Riordan, based on Greek and Roman mythology. It was published on October 2, 2012, and is the third book in The Heroes of Olympus series, a sequel to the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. It is preceded by The Son of Neptune and followed by The House of Hades. The novel is narrated in the third-person.
The Demigod Diaries is a collection of short stories relating to The Heroes of Olympus book series.
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is a 2013 fantasy adventure film directed by Thor Freudenthal from a screenplay by Marc Guggenheim, based on the 2006 novel The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan. The sequel to Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), it is the second and final installment in the Percy Jackson film series.
The House of Hades is a fantasy-adventure novel written by American author Rick Riordan, based on Greek and Roman mythology. It was published on October 8, 2013, and is the fourth book in The Heroes of Olympus series, preceded by The Mark of Athena and followed by The Blood of Olympus.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians is a two-film series based on the novel series of the same name by the author Rick Riordan. The series was distributed by 20th Century Fox, produced by 1492 Pictures and consists of two installments. The first film, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), was directed by Chris Columbus and was released on February 12, 2010. The second installment, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, was originally intended to be released in March 2013 but was instead pushed back to August 7, 2013, and was directed by Thor Freudenthal. While the film series was intended to match the five novel book series, and the second film laid the foundation for a third film, further films were never produced. The shortened series in total grossed nearly $430 million at the worldwide box office. A reboot television series premiered on Disney+ in December 2023.
The Blood of Olympus is an American fantasy-adventure novel written by Rick Riordan, based on Greek and Roman mythology. Released on October 7, 2014, the fifth and final novel in The Heroes of Olympus series, and it was followed by The Chalice of the Gods (2023), part of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series.
The Crown of Ptolemy is the third and last book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Kane Chronicles crossover series. It was released in the back of the paperback version of The House of Hades on March 31, 2015, and later as an ebook and audiobook. The ebook edition was released May 12, 2015.
The Lightning Thief is a musical with music and lyrics by Rob Rokicki and a book by Joe Tracz, based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Rick Riordan. The musical follows Percy Jackson, a 12-year-old boy who newly discovers that he is a demigod and goes on a quest to find Zeus' missing lightning bolt and prevent a war between the Greek gods.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is an American fantasy television series created by Rick Riordan and Jonathan E. Steinberg for Disney+, based on the book series of the same name by Riordan. Walker Scobell stars as Percy Jackson, alongside Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth Chase and Aryan Simhadri as Grover Underwood.
↑ "Septemberfest". Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Reviews. BBC Radio 5 live. September 17, 2010. Archived from the original on September 3, 2012. Retrieved September 19, 2010.
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