Indian-origin actor Aryan Simhadri has been announced as one of the leads in the upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians series on Disney+.
The much-anticipated series is based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling young adult novels about the children of Greek gods, ‘half-bloods’, who attend a summer camp to hone their powers. The lead is Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon, who will be played by Walker Scobell.
15-year-old Aryan has been cast as Grover, Percy’s best friend who is secretly a half-man, half-goat creature from Greek mythology called a satyr. He will join Leah Sava Jeffries, who takes on the role of Annabeth Chase, to round off the primary cast.
The first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians will be eight episodes long and will begin shooting later this year.
Aryan, who is from Los Angeles, has previously worked on the 2022 remake of Cheaper by the Dozen, playing the role of Harsh. He was also seen in Disney original film Spin (2021) as Rohan, the younger brother of the lead character.
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This Disney+ series is the second attempt at adapting the Percy Jackson novels after two film adaptations Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), both of which received mixed reviews and were publicly criticised by author Rick Riordan.
One of the major criticisms for the films was the decision to raise the age of the original characters to suit the actors. Logan Lerman, who played Percy, was 18 at the time; Alexandra Doddario, who played Annabeth, was 24; and Brandon T Jackson, who played Aryan’s character Grover, was 26. In the original books, the characters are 13 years old.
This time, Riordan is actively involved with Percy Jackson and the Olympians, serving as an executive producer and co-writing the pilot episode. He also shared the announcement about the young cast on his blog.