Netflix adapting Rick Riordan’s The Kane Chronicles into a movie trilogy

In the scramble for big fantasy works to adapt into TV series or movies, many of the studios are leaving no property unconsidered as they look to find popular literary works that could be adapted into hit movies and series and hopefully develop the next Game of Thrones or MCU franchise. And despite having several big sci-fi and fantasy series already in development Netflix still feels the need for more as it has been revealed they are working on a film adaptation of Rick Riordan’s Egyptian mythology-inspired trilogy, The Kane Chronicles.

Riordan, whose works also include the popular Percy Jackson series of novels announced the news through his own personal website where he revealed that talks had been on-going for a year in trying to bring his popular trilogy of books across to a visual medium:

Hey, guys! An exciting announcement as posted on social media concerning the Kane Chronicles: We are developing the series for feature films on Netflix! 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.

The trilogy of books, which follows the mythological adventures of modern-day siblings Carter and Sadie Kane, will be adapted into “feature films,” according to Riordan, suggesting that each of the three—The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpent’s Shadow—are planned to be adapted and released in turn. Though Netflix could easily wait to see how the first film performs before deciding to green-light the last two novels.

What might disappoint fans about this news though is that the novels take place in the same Universe as Percy Jackson, but considering that the rights to that are owned by Disney – who is developing a Percy Jackson series for Disney+ – it means fans will not get the benefit of any bigger connected Universe and have to enjoy these movies as standalone stories. Which is arguably not a bad thing given that the novels themselves already have enough story to work and trying to build in a connection to other properties many just complicate matters.

There are no release dates or writers/directors attached to the project as yet, but given the popularity of the writer’s works, Netflix will probably do their best in securing the best talent they can find for these films. And probably a sizable budge to go along with it too.

Last Updated: September 15, 2020