In an interview with ISEB, director Chris Columbus outlines what he is aiming for in his big-screen adaptation of the enormously popular young adult novel Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. The novel follows the adventures of a modern-day 12-year-old boy who discovers he is the son of the Greek god Poseidon and ends up trying to prevent a war among the gods.
It is this world of Greek mythology that first drew Columbus to the project. This world, he contends, has never been adequately done on screen, but he has a plan to fix that. To start with, "cheesy stop-motion monsters" are out. CGI is in. The snakes in Medusa's (Uma Thurman's) hair will be a real standout, he suggests. The special effects are still a work in progress, though, and he isn't ready to show them off at Comic-Con next month. When he does show them off, he wants people to really be "blown away" and he's not quite there yet.
Columbus, who has been involved in making three of the Harry Potter movies, goes on to explain that one thing he is seriously trying to avoid in the Percy Jackson adaptation is any resemblance to Harry Potter. The similarities definitely are there in the book, he admits, but he is making every effort to remove them. And he is making other changes as well:
... there's a bit of a sense of liberation with Percy Jackson because we're changing the books. I wouldn't say significantly, but we're able to change them a little bit.
Will this upset fans? Too early to say, but for now the director sounds much more excited than worried and says he'd like to have to opportunity to expand on the world by adapting the sequels as well.