13 Apr – The highly-anticipated Disney+ "Percy Jackson" adaptation has finally found its lead actor in "The Adam Project" child star, Walker Scobell. The news was confirmed by author Rick Riordan, who has creative control over the project this time around, saying, "Walker Scobell is an incredibly talented young man who blew us away with his audition tapes for the role of Percy. 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." "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. It was obvious to me and the rest of the team that Walker had the perfect mix of comedic timing, sweetness, rebelliousness, snark and heroism to embody our hero Percy Jackson," he added. The upcoming series will be adapting "The Lightning Thief", the first novel which sees Percy travelling across America with his friends to clear his name.
Unlike the previous movie adaptations, which decided to age up the main characters as high school teens, the upcoming series will remain true to the books, with the character Percy Jackson being a 12-year-old boy who finds out that he is a demigod. On the other hand, Scobell will also be seen next in the Paramount film, "Secret Headquarters".