When 20th Century Fox made Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief in 2010, it was just another in a long line of youth fantasy films for the studio -- including franchise non-starters Eragon, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, and City of Ember -- that was designed to cash in on Potter-mania. As you can imagine, it was quite a coup for them to get Chris Columbus in the director's chair; Columbus had helmed the first two Harry Potter films, and was instrumental in bringing J.K. Rowling's beloved books to life on screen for Warner Brothers. His involvement with Percy Jackson lent a legitimacy and creative weight that none of Fox's other Young Adult projects had. The end result was a well-produced, well-cast movie, with a tone that was a bit more lighthearted and campy than the Potter movies -- perfectly suiting a series that is meant to hark back to classic Ray Harryhausen monster movies like Sinbad or Clash of the Titans.
