Book adaptations are always tricky. In 2010, Rick Riordan’s best-selling fantasy book series was converted into a disappointing live-action film, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. After over a decade, Rick, along with his wife Rebecca Riordan serves as an executive producer on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a series that promises to right all wrongs of the film.

The eight-part show takes fans to Camp Half-Blood where Walker Scobell’s Percy Jackson, Leah Sava Jefferies’ Annabeth Chase and Aryan Simhadri’s Grover Underwood embark on a high-stakes quest. In an exclusive interview with Filmfare, Rick and Rebecca Riordan opened up about creating a show for fans, course-correcting and more.

When did you decide that you needed to become co-creators of your own adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians?

Rick: We saw an opportunity when Fox was bought by the Disney corporation. Disney publishes my books in the United States and has since always. So it gave us an opportunity to go to them and say “You also have the film rights for the books. Let’s talk and see if we can turn it into a TV show we can all be proud of.”

Did you feel the weight of the 2010 film or did you see it as an opportunity to reclaim your story?

Rebecca: It’s a bit of both. The movie is a burden because there are a lot of fans that come to Percy Jackson as just being movie fans. So in some way, we need to satisfy them and the book fans too come to it with a different perspective. They want to see a book adaptation that feels right to them. It’s very exciting.

Rick: Yes, it is something we are mindful of. TV is a better format because it gives us the time to tell the story across eight episodes. It’s much better suited for the Lightning Thief. It needed to be a season of television. And I hope viewers will agree. And oh yeah, it’s exciting.

What went into casting the perfect Percy, Annabeth and Grover?

Rebecca: They are absolutely perfect. It was a long process. We looked at thousands of tapes of wonderful child actors who all had special things that could’ve brought to the show. But these three actors brought a sense of the characters and a professionalism that you don’t usually see in a child actor. We were so incredibly lucky to find them. We found our Percy, in fact, I think we found Leah even before we found Walker.

Rick: Yeah, we went into it simply looking for the actors that best embody the personalities of the characters. And it was also important that they work well together. It’s one thing to find a great actor and it’s another to find three of them that work wonderfully together. And these definitely do. All of the choices informed each other.

How much of the material did you update for younger audiences?

Rick: Oh yes, I think there was a general agreement with Becky and I and the team that we want the story to feel timeless. We want it to hold up. But it also needs to have a sensibility that is considerate and aware that this is a story that is being told for a global audience. It’s just not my son that I’m telling the story for. It’s not just for people in America, it’s for people all over the world. So it was important for us to make sure that the story felt welcoming. Anyone could be a demigod in Percy Jackson’s world. That was our guiding principle. Things like who is a monster and who is a hero – you can’t tell just by looking.
Rebecca: Yeah, perhaps the monsters aren’t how they appear.

Have you given any thought to dabbling into Indian mythology?

Rick: Well, I personally love Indian Mythology. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are incredible works. I don’t think that would be very well received for a white American man to tell a story about Hindu mythology. So it wouldn’t be a very good idea. That is one of the reasons why we opened up Rick Riordan Presents which is an imprint in publishing that we have here in the States for writers from those cultures to tell their stories. Roshni Chokshi for instance, does a story around a character called Aru Shah and it is anchored on Hindu mythology. She does a much better job than I could.

Rebecca: And our production company is hoping to do an adaptation of Aru Shah. That would be great.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is set to release on December 20, 2023, on OTT.

Struggling with a high unemployment rate, the Haryana government has released an advertisement recruiting 10,000 construction workers who will be sent to Israel, a country that has been locked in a war with Hamas for over two months and faces an acute shortage of labourers. 

The advertisement has been criticised both by some workers and the opposition, who have slammed the state for considering sending Indians to a “warzone”. It was posted just a day after the Ministry of External Affairs informed Parliament that no discussions have been held with Israel regarding a possible replacement of Palestinian construction workers with Indians.

The Haryana government has, however, defended the move, saying that the aim was to ensure that travel agents cannot fleece people by offering them jobs in other countries and that there is no compulsion for labourers to go to Israel if they are not comfortable doing so.

According to the health ministry in Gaza, at least 19,600 people – most of them women and children – have been killed in Israeli attacks on the strip of land since October 7, when Hamas launched a multi-pronged attack on the Jewish country, killing around 1,200 civilians. Around 240 people had also been taken hostage.

Employment Dilemma

The advertisement, which appeared in some newspapers on December 15, was issued by the Haryana Kaushal Rojgar Nigam, a state public sector company. It comes at a time when Haryana has the highest unemployment rate in the country, according to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), and Israel is facing a massive shortage of construction workers because of the cancellation of work permits of around 90,000 Palestinians.

The unemployment rate in Haryana was 2.9 per cent in 2013-14 (when the Congress was in power), which increased to 9 per cent in 2021-22.  As of July 31, 2023, 5.44 lakh unemployed youth have been registered with employment exchanges in the state

Data from the CMIE, released in January this year, showed that, at 37.4 per cent Haryana had the highest unemployment rate in India, compared to the national unemployment rate of 8.3 per cent. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP has dismissed the CMIE data and pointed to recruitments in the Staff Selection Commission and Haryana Public Service Commission, among others, to buttress his claims of providing employment. 

The Punjab and Haryana High Court order last month, which struck down a 2020 law providing 75% reservation in private jobs to residents of Haryana, has also opened up the Khattar government to criticism over youth not getting employment.

‘Give Us Jobs Here’

A worker from Kurukshetra said the government should give them jobs in India. “Israel is involved in a war, why is the government sending us there? The government keeps saying that our country is becoming wealthy,” said Chandan, a construction worker. 

The opposition has also trained its guns on the BJP-led government in Haryana.  “Everyone knows Israel is a warzone. The state government should give our youth jobs in Haryana itself,” said Congress MLA Neeraj Sharma. 

Government’s Take

The Haryana government has pointed out that its aim was to prevent cheating and people don’t have to go to Israel if they don’t want to. 

“This is a unique initiative by the government, which will ensure that travel agents can’t fleece people. We receive complaints about that every day. There is no compulsion to go to Israel, it’s only for people who want to go,” said Haryana Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar. 

In response to a query by Congress MP KC Venugopal, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan had told the Rajya Sabha on December 14 that the Centre has not held any discussions with Israel regarding a possible replacement of Palestinian labourers with Indian workers.

The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday disqualified former President Donald Trump from the ballot in the state’s presidential election next year over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

The ruling makes Trump the first presidential candidate in U.S. history to be deemed ineligible for the White House under a rarely used provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.

The court concluded that the U.S. Constitution bars the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024 from appearing on the ballot because of his role instigating violence against the U.S. government.

The ruling applies only to the state’s March 5 Republican primary, but its conclusion would likely also affect Trump’s status for the Nov. 5 general election. Nonpartisan U.S. election forecasters view Colorado as safely Democratic, meaning that President Joe Biden will likely carry the state regardless of Trump’s fate.

The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who argued that Trump should be disqualified for inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol in a failed attempt to obstruct the transfer of presidential power to Biden after the 2020 election.

Trump’s campaign called the court decision “flawed” and “undemocratic,” and said it would be appealed.

“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision,” a spokesperson from the Trump campaign said.

Trump’s campaign has condemned 14th Amendment challenges as an attempt to deny millions of voters their preferred choice for president.

The decision is a victory for advocacy groups and anti-Trump voters who have mounted several similar legal challenges to Trump’s candidacy under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted after the Civil War.

The decision reverses a ruling by a lower court judge who found Trump engaged in insurrection by inciting his supporters to violence, but, as president, Trump was not an “officer of the United States” who could be disqualified under the amendment.

A lawyer for Trump argued that the riot at the Capitol was not serious enough to qualify as an insurrection and that Trump’s remarks to his supporters in Washington that day were protected by his right to free speech. The lawyer contended that courts do not have the authority to order Trump removed from the ballot.

Advocates have hoped to use the case to boost a wider disqualification effort and potentially put the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees.

The Colorado court said the ruling is stayed until Jan. 4, 2024, to allow for appeals.

“The court’s decision today affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who disqualified himself from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment based on his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and that Secretary Griswold must keep him off of Colorado’s primary ballot. It is not only historic and justified, but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country,” said CREW President Noah Bookbinder.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)