AHC: Make the Percy Jackson films more successful than the Harry Potter films

[Zachariah]

You challenge is to make the film adaptations of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series (potentially including the subsequent book series in the Camp Half Blood Chronicles, and any of Riordan's other works set in the same fictional universe) more successful, both critically and commercially, than the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (including Fantastic Beasts) by the present day. Bonus points if you can do this without undermining the Harry Potter film series, and for going into extra detail (eg, alternative directors? Actors? Plot?). Can this be done? How plausible could it have been?

 

[Nivek]

You challenge is to make the film adaptations of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series (potentially including the subsequent book series in the Camp Half Blood Chronicles, and any of Riordan's other works set in the same fictional universe) more successful, both critically and commercially, than the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (including Fantastic Beasts) by the present day. Bonus points if you can do this without undermining the Harry Potter film series, and for going into extra detail (eg, alternative directors? Actors? Plot?). Can this be done? How plausible could it have been?

They should come first, when i hear PJ for me was a HP ripoff(when HP is a ripoff of the worst witch)

 

[Kalvan]

And here I thought "Harry Potter" was a ripoff Legend Entertainment's "Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Chicks."

 

[Alternator]

A quick check of Wikipedia indicates that the Percy Jackson series saw its first book released in 2005; in the same year, Goblet of Fire hit the theaters. The two series are broad-strokes similar enough that the Percy Jackson films are targeting the same audience, which has already committed its interest to Harry Potter.

I don't see how this is plausible without dramatically curtailing the Harry Potter franchise; it's just too big and has too much of a head start.

 

[X_X]

The characters and concept were created by Riordan in the 90s out his love for Greek mythology, but the success of Harry Potter is really what got publishers interested in giving him a chance. So in OTL the publication of Jackson is itself a direct result of the success of Potter. Maybe have the Jackson books come out in the late 90s at the same time as Harry Potter, or delay the release of the first Potter book until the 2000s (Rowling did have trouble convincing people these things would sell).

 

[Anarcho-Occultist]

Easiest way to do this is to lower the Potter film quality. Maybe have film 3 get stuck in development hell after Harris dies and the franchise is regarded well but having fallen short. You could even have a reboot launched a few years later that is pretty low-quality.

To fix Percy Jackson, the casting needs to be better (truer to the book). The budget should also be increased a bit (better special effects are needed).

 

[TRH]

Easiest way to do this is to lower the Potter film quality. Maybe have film 3 get stuck in development hell after Harris dies and the franchise is regarded well but having fallen short. You could even have a reboot launched a few years later that is pretty low-quality.

To fix Percy Jackson, the casting needs to be better (truer to the book). The budget should also be increased a bit (better special effects are needed).

I didn't read the books, but I was under the impression that the main characters remained prepubescent throughout. Perhaps that needs to be changed, because otherwise I totally get why Hollywood would want to age them up a little. Child actors are a crapshoot.

 

[Anarcho-Occultist]

I didn't read the books, but I was under the impression that the main characters remained prepubescent throughout. Perhaps that needs to be changed, because otherwise I totally get why Hollywood would want to age them up a little. Child actors are a crapshoot.

I was actually specifically referring to Annabeth being explicitly blonde in the books and casting her as a brunette.

 

[TRH]

I was actually specifically referring to Annabeth being explicitly blonde in the books and casting her as a brunette.

Ah. I knew about that, but not having read the books, figured the age discrepancy was more important. I mean, they never gave Daniel Radcliffe green eyes, and that's actually rather important in the Harry Potter books.

 

[Tjakari]

A lot of people around my age (19) grew up with the movies and the books, but those were being worked on close enough to each other that they could appeal to the same groups simultaneously, more or less. The Philosopher's Stone movie came out only 4 years after the book, and the same for the Chamber of Secrets, and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Neither medium needed to adjust all that much to any age difference in their audience. The series is still fresh for everyone involved and those who got interested early are still invested as there were still new books coming out while the movies were being filmed.

Comparing that to the Percy Jackson series, you have the first movie coming out a year after the book series had concluded (the first part of it anyway). Everyone who had been reading up to that point had both aged up with the story and seen the story concluded. The movie was old news to most of the people that would have been enthused about it a few years prior. I saw the first PJ movie on a redbox maybe a year or two after it came out mostly just out of curiosity. I had finished the books a long time before then and didn't really think the movies had anything to offer. Maybe if I was younger at the time or the books hadn't all been written I may have had a different reaction. Writ large, having the core audience for your work uninterested from the jump can't be good for success.

TLDR; If you want the series to do better, the movie deal is going to have to come earlier or the books later. The movies started after the books were done and very close at that. Finished stories that are still fresh in people's minds aren't good fuel for adaptions unless you can guarantee the films will bring in a wider audience. ASOIAF was able to expand very far from an HBO drama, but the same growth of popularity can't be counted on for YA fiction; especially when there's so much of it. To get big the movies have to cater to their core audience which at first will be mostly readers and their families, and the first step to that is making sure those people are still invested in the property.