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Meet Percy Jackson!

Demigods, the time has come. I am thrilled to introduce you to Percy Jackson.


Photo Credit: Disney/Paul Lorei

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. I got to deliver the news to Walker personally via Zoom back on Jan. 28 that he had been chosen for the part, and it was a magical moment that made me feel for the first time: “Okay, this is real. This is worth all the waiting and the hard work. This project is going to be amazing.” It has been tough keeping this information under my hat because I was so excited to share the news with the fans!


Screenshot of Becky and me breaking the news to Walker on Jan. 28

Aside from being a rising star, Walker is also a super-fan of the books, having read everything through The Trials of Apollo. He already owns a Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, as you can tell from the photo above. He had no idea I was going to be on this Zoom call. He didn’t know the call was to tell him he got the part. The shirt was just him repping his love for the series, and that look of surprise is totally genuine.

Since January, we have been getting to know Walker and his wonderful family. He even arrived in California for a chemistry read in February with Annabeth’s magical New York Yankees cap, which he made his dad buy for him while they were in NYC. This kid knows his stuff.  Since then, we’ve gotten to see Walker do numerous chemistry reads with candidates for our other two leads, Annabeth and Grover, and while I’m confident those two roles are getting very close to being finalized and announced, I felt like the time was right to let you meet our Percy!

We look forward to working with the Scobells in Vancouver full-time this summer and building on the dedicated, supportive, enthusiastic community that is rapidly forming around this project. The excitement is so thick you could cut it with a Celestial bronze sword. Walker is an avid skateboarder and skier, and is super excited to get to Vancouver and start working on swordplay, holding his breath underwater, and other stunts of derring-do. I’m excited he’s doing all that and I don’t have to, but I will definitely be there cheering him on every step of the way!

More news soon, demigods, but please give Walker a huge Camp Half-Blood welcome. He is going to surpass your highest expectations from the very first line of the show.

Rick Riordan