It’s a rare and delightful thing when each trailer for an upcoming adaptation is even more appealing than the last. This third look at Disney’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians has the most action (and the most monsters) we’ve seen so far—but it’s also a great introduction to Percy (Walker Scobell) himself. He’s a seemingly ordinary kid who just discovered he’s the son of Poseidon (Toby Stephens). Things are really, really, really weird.
And yeah: He’s gonna need a sword.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is an adaptation of Rick Riordan’s bestselling middle-grade book series; the first season will adapt the first book, The Lightning Thief. In it, Percy learns of his heritage (and the dangers that come with it), gets sent to Camp Half-Blood, and then goes off on a quest with two friends, the satyr Grover (Aryan Simhadri) and Annabeth (Leah Jeffries), a daughter of Athena. The quest? To find Zeus’s stolen lightning bolt. The monsters? Plentiful.
Naturally, there are quite a few gods, too. The rest of the players in this epic tale include Chiron (Glynn Turman), Ares (Adam Copeland), Hermes (Lin-Manuel Miranda), Medusa (Jessica Parker Kennedy), Alecto (Megan Mullally), Zeus (the late Lance Reddick), Dionysus (Jason Mantzoukas), and Hades (Jay Duplass).
This adaptation, which follows two movies Riordan really did not like, comes from Black Sails co-creator John Steinberg and producer Dan Shotz. Riordan himself wrote the first two episodes.
“A quest,” Chiron says in this trailer, “is always undertaken by three.” This particular quest begins with a two-episode premiere on Disney+ on December 20th.
