With both television and film, adaptations from book-to-screen are bound to generate all kinds of conversations between fans of the source material who had certain expectations. Sometimes, fans are on board with any necessary changes; other times, the chatter about the adaptation is overwhelmingly negative. Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians has had author Rick Riordan involved from the start, and executive producer Craig Silverstein opened up about why that’s “critical,” especially compared to George R.R. Martin’s recent complaints about HBO’s House of the Dragon.
Percy Jackson, available streaming now with a Disney+ subscription, wrapped the second season in late January of the 2026 TV schedule and is already well into production on Season 3. Author Rick Riordan has been an executive producer on the series from the start after being famously critical of the film adaptations, tweeting (via People) that the movies were like “my life's work going through a meat grinder when I pleaded with them not to do it” and “I certainly have nothing against the very talented actors” but “I'm just sorry they got dragged into that mess.”
I spoke with Craig Silverstein, an executive producer and co-showrunner on the Percy Jackson series, at SCAD TVfest first about him having the support of Rick Riordan, which the author doubled down on after the Season 2 finale. Silverstein shared:
It's great. It's critical, and it's really good. The thing about Rick is, because he's a writer, when there's an issue and there's a problem in the adaptation, something that was like such a snap to write on the page, and it's a little more difficult to translate to the screen. And I kind of draw him into solving the problem. He's willing to play. He can come right back as a writer. He isn't like, 'I don't know. I figured it out this one way. I could never figure it out another way.' And sometimes his pitch will be the one that gets us out of that problem and creates this new thing.
Rick Riordan is directly involved in bringing his own story to the screen, which was not what happened with the first Percy Jackson movie in 2010 or its 2013 sequel. While the adaptation from page to screen has meant necessary changes from the source material, all signs point towards a collaborative process between the author and the producers.
That status quo is a stark contrast to what George R.R. Martin has said about House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spinoff. He aired some grievances shortly after Season 2 finished airing on HBO and has referred to his relationship with showrunner Ryan Condal as “worse than rocky” and abysmal, blaming Condal for how he “basically stopped listening to me” and his notes about bringing Fire & Blood, the source material, to TV in House of the Dragon.
The Percy Jackson EP confirmed that he’d seen the controversy that followed George R.R. Martin’s comments, as well as that it would “definitely” be a nightmare of a response from an author to an adaptation of their work:
We've seen this change happen, where authors and their following, their fans, have empowered them, because the early word starts with the fans. If they get a whiff that that the story is not going to be the story, then yeah, they get upset. And then people who might be into it, then they just hear like, 'Oh, it's not going to be the thing.' And they haven't even seen it! And they're like, 'I'm never gonna watch it.' So it's become really, really critical.
Fortunately, there hasn’t been backlash from Rick Riordan or changes to the source material going viral like what has happened with George R.R. Martin and House of the Dragon, although Martin is notably complimentary towards A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. (You can find the second Game of Thrones spinoff streaming with an HBO Max subscription now.)
As for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Craig Silverstein shared that there’s “about a month and a half left of shooting” for Season 3. It remains to be seen when it will be ready to join Seasons 1 and 2 on Disney+, but the pace for releasing new seasons continues to be steady. For now, you can always revisit those first two seasons and/or the books written by Rick Riordan.
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