How Tom Rothman Killed the PERCY JACKSON Film Franchise and It Ended Up at Disney with a Big Budget
Tom Rothman might just be one of the worst studio executives in Hollywood. It’s amazing the kind of brain farts this guy has had over the years. One of his most well-known brain farts was the version of Deadpool that we saw in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and most recently he worked on the adaptation of Uncharted, which was an embarrassingly bad movie. He’s also the guy who dismissed the Deadpool solo project for years.
Well, it turns out that he is also the reason that the Percy Jackson film franchise ended up failing. Screenwriter Craig Titley recently spoke with Variety and talked about the days where Hollywood studios were "buying up any book that had three kids chasing monsters."
20th Century Fox acquired Percy Jackson and enlisted director Chris Columbus to replicate the same level of success he found with the Harry Potter franchise. When that first film came out, though, it was a big disappointment. So what happened with the franchise, and how did it end up at Disney? Tom Rotham happened.
An inside source explained: "The problem was Tom Rothman." He was “notorious for doing movies on the cheap. So if Harry Potter is what you’re aiming for, you’re automatically handicapping the project."
The source added: "He felt marketing could sell a known book series, so why spend top dollar? But the special effects are bad. There’s not the edge that the books had."
Titley confirmed these budget constraints did lead to significant rewrites, including changing some of the first book's biggest moments. Yeah, Rothman definitely seems to have a backward way of thinking when it comes to making movies. He doesn’t really care about the story or the properties that he’s worked on and is willing to sacrifice quality filmmaking for, well… crap. No wonder a lot of the films he has his hands in aren’t good.
The author of the book series, Rick Riordan, attempted to convince the studio to change how they were doing things and adapt his stories in a better and more caring way, and he even offered detailed script notes. But, Rothman and the studio didn’t listen to him.
When reflecting now on that experience, he says: "I basically wrote off Hollywood for a long, long time. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with the film industry. There were many years of me saying, 'I don’t want to engage. I don’t want to think about other adaptations. I’m done.'"
Riordan then realized: “It started to become clear that something was going to happen with me or without me, I had a long talk with Becky, my wife. We said, 'Well, if something’s going to happen, it’s probably best to give it one more shot.'"
That’s when Disney entered the picture. They picked up the right and with Riordan, started developing a series for Disney+. The author says the show is "more faithful to the source material, which is what the fans of the books really would love to see."
To make this happen and to tell his story in a proper way, it was revealed that Disney budgeted each episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians for between $12 million - $15 million, which is the same budget that the Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian gets. That’s a huge deal for Disney and a big investment in a project that they feel can be a huge success. The studio obviously believes that the series has major potential to draw subscribers over the coming years.
The series tells the fantastical tale of the titular 12-year-old modern demigod, played by Walter Scobell, “who’s just coming to terms with his newfound supernatural powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. With help from his friends Grover and Annabeth, Percy must embark on an adventure of a lifetime to find it and restore order to Olympus.”
Percy Jackson and the Olympians hits Disney+ on December 20th.