Why Was There No 'Percy Jackson 3'?

Working as crowd-pleasing, character-driven, commercially successful YA fantasies way before Lionsgate hit paydirt with The Hunger Games, why didn't we get a Percy Jackson trilogy?

 'Percy Jackson and The Lightening Thief' (CREDIT: 20th Century Studios)

                       by Jack Linsdell

In it's prime, the YA fantasy flick was one of the most commercially viable movies around. Lionsgate may have taken the genre to blockbuster heights with Jennifer Lawrence's The Hunger Games and Shailene Woodley's Divergent flicks, but it was 20th Century Fox (now Studios) that made it popular in the first place. Their two Percy Jackson adaptions made a tidy $428 million worldwide on a combined $180 million budget, giving audiences enjoyable, kid-friendly adventures way before Divergent, The Maze Runner or Hunger Games: Catching Fire had even been given the the green light. Yet, a proverbial Percy Jackson 3 never came about, and seven years later, it seems that it never will either. Instead, Disney Plus are creating their own series based on Rick Riordon's hit books, apparently with the author's direct involvement this time. So, the big question is...what went wrong?

Well...I'm not sure is the honest answer. It all started so well. Fox hired Chris Colombus, the filmmaker known for making kid-friendly, crowd-pleasing hits, be they cult comedies (Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Mrs Doubtfire) or fantasy blockbusters (the first two Harry Potter flicks, Night At The Muesum). He was a smart choice of director to helm a $90 million adaption of a vastly popular YA novel that has produced a trilogy that has sold over 69 million books worldwide. An emphasis on character development over world-building in Craig Titley's screenplay and a game cast of well-liked actors (Logan Lerman, Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson, Catherine Keener and Uma Thurman) helped make Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightening Thief (heck, that's a mouthful) a crowd-pleasing hit. Cue a $226 worldwide cume, including a healthy post-theatrical DVD sales of $37 million the the first year alone. 

Three years later and we received a sequel Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. Chris Columbus was swapped out for relative unknown Thor Freudenthal in the director's chair, and, despite poorer reviews and a less star-studded cast, the 2013 flick still earned an impressive $200 million worldwide, essentially equalling the first film. Although maybe losing of the charm of the 2010 flick, the core cast (Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, Brandon T Jackson) are delightful again here and actually Freudenthal crafted a vastly enjoyable and well-made piece of popcorn escapism. 

Both Percy Jackson flicks may never have been blowout commercial or critical successes, but they sure as hell weren't failures of any kind either. Way before Lionsgate made the genre popular, Fox was the one establishing the formula and engaging the audience for the very first time to the fact that YA adaptions could become crowd-pleasing fantasies. Both movies made money and they both also worked well as enjoyable teenage-targeted fantasy adventures. 

There is no valid reason to suggest why Fox and friends didn't actually make a Percy Jackson 3. However, when you think about the conventional "two to three year" sequel gap, the third movie wouldn't have been released much before summer 2015, if not 2016. By that time, Lionsgate was bringing to an end it's blockbuster four-film The Hunger Games series with Mockingjay - Part Two. Those Jennifer Lawrence-led flicks earned a whopping $2.9 billion worldwide on a combined $493 million budget just in the space of three years. They also had the Divergent flicks which although were far from acclaimed blockbusters, were pulling in similar numbers to the two Percy Jackson movies.

It wasn't just competition from other studios that was trumping Percy Jackson but by 2014, Fox themselves had already found themselves and more popular (and commercially prosperous) YA franchise. Wes Ball's The Maze Runner may have earned a similar domestic gross to both Logan Lerman-starring adventures, but the international ($245 million compared with $133 million and $137 million) and global ($348 million compared to $226 million and $202 million) cumes were so much higher that it made more sense funding The Mazer Runner 2 rather than Percy Jackson 3. As it stands, The Maze Runner trilogy concluded in 2018 having earned a combined $949 million on a $157 million budget for Fox. 

So, despite proving that big-budget adaptions of popular YA novels could make money for studios, the Percy Jackson flicks soon became redundant IP when the competition it paved the way for overtook them at the global box office. Lionsgate's rise with The Hunger Games and Divergent flicks and Fox's own blockbuster success with The Maze Runner meant that by the time Percy Jackson 3 went into development, the IP had been overshadowed in it's popularity. In 2010, Chris Columbus' flick was the only game in town for blockbuster adaptions of YA novels. By 2015, the proverbial Percy Jackson 3 was just the Ant Man to the MCU. When your a small fish in a big pond, who got there first doesn't count for anything.