Walker Scobell Cast as Percy Jackson in Upcoming Disney+ Remake

By Preethi Mangadu
Web Content Contributor

On April 11, 2022, Rick Riordan announced on his blog that Walker Scobell will be the new Percy Jackson in the upcoming Disney+ “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” remake series.

Disney+ greenlighted the remake of the book series this past January, and many fans were ecstatic to hear the news after being disappointed with the two movie remakes of “The Lightning Thief” and “The Sea of Monsters” in the 2010s. The excitement continued when they learned that Riordan, the author of the book series, is taking part in writing and producing the show. 

The first season of the show will follow the plot of “The Lightning Thief”. In this book, Jackson, a 12-year-old kid, finds out he is a demigod and the son of Poseidon. With this information, he makes his way to Camp Half-Blood where he begins to understand his new powers, but Zeus claims that Jackson has stolen his lightning bolt. This leads Jackson to travel across the United States to find the bolt with Annabeth Chase and Grover Underwood. 

Scobell’s debut film was Netflix’s “The Adam Project” where he played the younger version of Ryan Reynold’s character. This movie was streamed for a total of 92 million hours in its debut weekend this past March, according to Netflix. 

“Many of you recently discovered how great Walker is when you watched his movie The Adam Project, in which Walker lit up the screen as a younger version of Ryan Reynolds’ character,” Riordan said on his blog, “We were fortunate enough to audition Walker months before that movie came out, but the film only confirmed what we already knew about his talent.”

Scobell was told that he secured the role on January 28, 2022, and he has been working with the team in preparation for the role. Riordan confirmed Scobell has done chemistry reads with actors who are being considered for Chase and Underwood and the roles may be finalized soon. 

“The perfect trio has to be found first, as that will inform a lot of the other casting choices. It’s not just a matter of finding a great actor for each role,” Riordan said. “It’s a matter of finding a group of great actors that have good chemistry when they act together.”

Riordan said while they are in the process of casting the main trio, they wanted to focus on actors that could embody the characters, their voices, their humor and who were age-appropriate.

“If I may invoke the Movies That Shall Not Be Watched, I know a lot of you cared deeply and were unhappy when Annabeth turned out to be a brunette rather than blonde, but for me, that was never the main issue,” Riordan said. “What mattered were that those actors, as talented and wonderful as they are, were WAY too old for the parts as I wrote them, and their age was central to the plot.”

The show is still in the early stages of production, but for more information and news about the show visit Rick Riordan’s blog or Disney’s press release.

Featured Image by Preethi Mangadu