Judging by the NYCC Percy Jackson panel, the show is going to rule

At this year’s New York Comic Con, the creators of the upcoming Percy Jackson show on Disney Plus once again had a reminder of the comforting storybook series: unlike the infamous movie of 2011, the author Rick Riordan and his wife Becky were heavily involved in the production from the beginning.

“From the very beginning, this has been so much about the partnership, the cooperation, the relationship to make sure that everyone who comes to the show knows that this is a family business,” said executive producer and showrunner John Steinberg. “This story was taken out of a very personal place. It’s so big and so complex and so many moving parts… that’s always where his heart is going to be.”

“John and I got to sit down with Rick and Becky and just be on the bubble,” said executive producer Dan Shotz. “We got to do this with Guy. He was part of the whole process. He was with us in the writer’s room on set. Becky and Rick moved there most of the time, in Vancouver. It was a real pleasure and it just made a big difference.”

All of the staff members were excited about fixing the details of the show. Production designer Dan Anna spoke to the real world of Camp Half-Blood as exciting and exciting (“the funeral was a place to hang,” added director James Bobin) and especially true to the cast of the show.

“Maybe we could arrange something so you could go and try it. “It’s especially critical for our actors to bring them into the world,” Anna explained.

Photo: David Bukach/Disney

Meanwhile, as the iconic Camp Blood Orange just right, costume designer Trish Monoghan says the costume department tried about 20 different shades of orange in pre-production.

“We had to find a shirt that worked outside in the sun, under a gray sky, in the forest, even in an indoor climate,” he explained. “We had to end up dyeing over 350 t-shirts in basically almost like witches’ hay.

And after dyeing those shirts in batches of 19, the printing process was a guide to put the logo on the shirts; then” he washes again. Monaghan and his team were instructed to get all the details right, including undivided coats, according to which the campers’ cabins belonged to them. The Ares campers, for example, had their coats on when those campers got into fights. Meanwhile, Hephaestus had torn off his sleeves and was making dirtier fabrics than he had been working on.

Photo: Petrana Radulovic/Polygon

Those attending the panel were also treated to three separate clips from the show (the last one introduced by Riordan himself). The first was the first seven minutes of the show, which is basically the first part of the book to life, until Percy’s distinct narration. As Walker tells Scolbell, he saw flashbacks of young Percy and mythological creatures growing up, including a pegasus on the roof of a New York building. Then he meets Grover, played by Aryan Simhardi, and two sets of cards over a game of mythological creatures.

Coming to the present day, Percy and his classmates stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a field trip while Mr. C (Glynn Turman) gives an assignment. Another flashback is as Perseus looks at the statue of Percy and tells his mother (Virginia Kull) about the Greek hero. It breaks to the present day as Nancy, one of Percy’s most frequent school bullies, plays him; After breaking the ledge of his pen, Percy comes face to face with the horrible Mrs. Dowd, who warns him. Mr. C hands him the pen – yes; the Riptide’s faithful pen and sword. The scene cuts to Grover and Percy eating lunch outside the Met, talking about the best way to deal with bullies. After Nancy throws the cheese at Grover, Percy stands and walks over to her and before he can do anything, he falls back into the fountain.

The second stage was the time of the car and the race. Grover sits in the back and Percy tries to explain all the monsters he’s seen while Percy’s mom Sally drives the car. They escape being chased by a minotaur – a monster that presented a unique challenge to the VFX designers, one that they were very excited to pull off.

“We need to make it (the minotaur) scary enough, but not too scary,” said VFX supervisor Eric Henry. “You can’t be” that Scary with underpants, when he added white tights to the minotaur.

“We decided to have a minotaur run on all fours to attack. For me, when a bull runs at you on four runs, it’s scary.

The last scene shown on the board was some high-stakes footage of a flag game being played by the campers. Since these campers are all trained demigods, they take aim with swords, spears, and other weapons (no maiming allowed though!). After some huge group fights, the camper tells his group that Percy and Annabeth have a plan. The footage then cut to Percy flossing — as in, Fortnite dance, not dental treatment — on a cliff, alone. He proceeds to defecate, pet a lizard, then lie down on a log… before being ambushed by Ares’s camp leader Clarissa (Dior Goodjohn) and his compliments.

He is a fierce enemy of Clarisse, a true child of the god of war, and is determined to take revenge on Percy. But, though outnumbered four to one, Percius manages to hold his own, so that Clarissius pursues him to the river. His special electric spear breaks, just in time for his team to capture the flag. As he stumbles back, Annabeth (Leah Jeffries) reveals that she has been waiting invisibly by his side the whole time. He asks why and she continues to push him into the water, which immediately begins to heal his wounds. dun-dun-dun.

All three scenes shown feel lifted directly from the pages of the book, in a very deliberate and loving way. But as Steinberg, Shotz, and the rest of the team said after the show, being faithful to the books is only one part of the job.

“I think it has two responsibilities,” Steinberg explained. “I think one of the things that you should try to do is if you love these books and if they hold a special place in your childhood, in your heart, in your youth, that’s what you’re going to be. And going to see what you have spent so much time only imagining. At the same time, if you have everything (…) our work is not enough. So the challenge is how do you surprise yourself in a way that feels so organic to the rest of the story that it could have been there all along? I think that’s because you can’t attack without Rick or Becky.”