Disney
“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” has been renewed for its second season at Disney+.
As announced on Disney’s latest quarterly earnings call by CEO Bob Iger, Season 1 has been streamed for over 110 million hours across both Disney+ and Hulu. Divided by the season’s runtime, that translates to roughly 20.6 million total views, suggesting that the season’s audience grew throughout its monthlong run, as Variety exclusively reported that Episode 1 hit 13.3 million views in its first six days of availability.
The series was also a hit with critics, earning a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes with Variety‘s Aramide Tinubu praising it as “a gorgeous, intriguing narrative about self-discovery, courage and friendship.”
Adapted from Rick Riordan’s book series of the same name, “Percy Jackson’s” success was crucial for Disney, whose execs gave the series a Star Wars-sized budget and were betting on its potential to kick off a major franchise. In a Variety cover story, president of 20th Television Karey Burke said that one of the major goals throughout the development process was to “have the show live alongside the worlds created by our sister studios at Lucasfilm and Marvel. We really wanted to spare no expense to make sure that this series felt as big and imaginative.”
Season 1 of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” followed Percy (Walker Scobell), a 12-year-old modern demigod, who’s just coming to terms with his newfound supernatural powers when the sky god Zeus (the late Lance Reddick) accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. Percy and his friends Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) and Grover (Aryan Simhadri) venture on a trek across America to find it and restore order to Olympus.
“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” was created by Riordan and Jon Steinberg, who served as showrunner alongside Dan Shotz. Executive producers include Riordan, his wife Rebecca Riordan, Steinberg, Shotz, James Bobin, Bert Salke, Monica Owusu-Breen, Jim Rowe, Anders Engström, Jet Wilkinson and Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell and D.J. Goldberg. The series hails from Disney Branded Television, and 20th Television is the studio.
