Upcoming Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians is taking the virtual production route.
The 20th Television series, based on Rick Riordan’s best-selling novels, has started production in Vancouver and will be the first project to be made on Industrial Light & Magic’s newly built StageCraft LED stage, which features a 95-foot LED screen.
“The story of Percy Jackson has such an epic scope,” said Riordan, who serves an an exec producer, of his fantastical story of a 12-year-old modern demigod, who will be played by Walker Scobell. “I am over the moon that we have forged such a great relationship [with ILM] to give this show such a cutting-edge look and feel.”
This is ILM’s fifth permanent StageCraft volume. ILM, a division of Disney’s Lucasfilm, also maintains two virtual production stages in Manhattan Beach, Calif., one at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif., and one at Pinewood Studios in London.
Recent and upcoming productions that used the L.A.-based StageCraft systems are Disney+’s The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi, while its Pinewood stage was used for filming Marvel Studios’ upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. (ILM also built a temporary StageCraft volume in Sydney for Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which arrives in theaters next week.)
“With ILM’s StageCraft technology we allow filmmakers to design, light and shoot the digital world as they would in the practical world all integrated in front of the cast and crew onstage,” said Chris Bannister, exec producer, ILM StageCraft.
Added 20th executive vp production Nissa Diederich, “The stage we have built will be home to Percy and potentially dozens more of our most ambitious series.”
