Rick Riordan is a well-known name in young adult fantasy circles for his best-sellingPercy Jacksonseries. Now the novelist is back in the limelight with a new deal with Netflix to develop hisKane Chroniclesseries as a set of movies produced by the streaming giant. Riordan took to his blog to announce the news with the following statement.
“An exciting announcement as posted on social media concerning the Kane Chronicles: We are developing the series for feature films onNetflix! We have been working on this deal since last October, about the same time we started working on Percy, and I’m so glad I can now announce it! That’s all I can say for the moment, but stay tuned. I will try to answer some questions during the Tower of Nero tour events.”
Similar to how thePercy Jacksonseries mined Greek mythology to tell a modern tale about a half-human son of Poseidon,Kane Chroniclesdips its toes into Egyptian mythology for inspiration. The series tells the story of Carter and Sadie Kane, who discover they are descendants of Egyptian pharaohs Narmer and Ramses the Great.
The trilogy of adventure books, which includeThe Red Pyramid,The Throne of FireandThe Serpent’s Shadow, take place in the same reality as thePercy Jacksonseries, and there have even been crossovers between the two. Both series explore a world where humans unknowingly live side-by-side with monsters and gods of legend, and only a chosen few, like Percy and Carter and Sadie, are trusted with knowledge of both worlds and tasked with keeping the balance between the two.
In the past, Riordan had a more hands-off approach with the movie adaptation ofPercy Jackson, and the resulting feature took so many liberties with the source material and was so widely panned by critics and fans, that the novelist resolved to have a more direct role in any new adaptations going forward.
By picking up the rights toKane Chronicles, Netflix has once again signaled their intent to appeal to not just older fans, but the younger demographic as well, which is a section of the streaming audience that Disney currently has a vice-like grip on. Recently, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had flat out stated that his company plans to beat the mouse empire at their own game, even if that plan will take a long time.
“We want to beat Disney in family animation. That’s going to take a while. I mean, they are really good at it. We’re both very focused on building out our animation group and, you know, it’s a friendly competition. “We both want to do incredible stories for consumers and we want to be able to raise the bar in that area. We know that they will be a challenger and a competitor for the next 50 years.”
For now, Riordan fans can rest easy knowing the author is involved in the production ofKane Chronicles, which means the films that eventually get made will do a better job of honoring the source material. This news comes direct fromRick Riordan.
