Thor Freudenthal has certainly got a good name, and he had a surprisingly big hit with Diary Of a Wimpy Kid, but whether he’s the man who can save the Percy Jackson franchise is another matter. Fox obviously thinks so though, as Variety reports that they’ve hired him to helm the follow-up to Chris Columbus’ Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.
A couple of months ago it was revealed that rather surprisingly, the studio was moving forward on the sequel, despite the fact the first film didn’t even break $100 million at the US box office, and cost $95 million to make. Fox felt that with the books still incredibly popular and with the first film having now soaked up a bigger audience on DVD, it was worth taking a punt on developing the second book in Rick Riordan’s fantasy series, The Sea Monsters. That book sees Percy and his cohorts head under the sea in search of the mysterious Golden Fleece.
Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have been hired to come up with the script. It’s still fairly early days though, as Fox is yet to greenlight the movie and hasn’t exercised its opion yet on Logan Lerman, who played Percy Jackson and was signed for a series of movies.
Perhaps Freudenthal can inject the magic the first film lacked, but it’s going to be an uphill struggle.