Demigod Lair

This is a day old, but Rick's tour has ended.  He now is back at home, and we can only guess he's working on the new series...

Two new characters have been casted in The Lightning Thief Movie.

Merritt Patterson will play Aphrodie Girl #2 (uncredited)

...and Sara Smyth will play a Nymph (uncredited).

Quote from MortalNet:

OK, I just saw Rick at a booksinging, and he said some interesting things...

1. Rick Riordan is starting a new series that is not based of of Greek mythology! The series is based of of the plot line the the gods of Ancient Egypt or going to invade 21st century America! I don't know If this story involves the Greek Gods, or what it will be called. Rick Riordan chose the Egyptian gods, because after the Greek Myths, Egyptian Mythology was the most popular when he taught social studies and language arts. Stay tuned for more info. 

2. Also, the new book series WILLinvolve the prophecy made at the end of the book! 

3. The Minor gods will have a lot more respect and power in the new series!

4. The Lightning Thief Movie is filming, and Rick did tell us some stuff about it. We have a mental image on one of the shots. On a hill (I think it's Camp Half Blood Hill), there is this big bonfire, and hundreds of demigods are sitting around it, and there's big banners for every one of the Cabins.  There is a big warehouse filled with props and stuff. 

All of these facts are true, and [MortalNet] heard Rick say them himself.

I have added a comments box at the very bottom of Lightning Thief Page where you can add comments on the casting choices, crew, or anything else you'd like to comment on [about the PJO movie].

Quote from Rick's blog:

Yesterday was quite a tour de force. After my morning media interviews,a driver from the studio picked me up and took me to the productionoffices for the Percy Jackson movie. The studio, I’m told, used to be adistribution warehouse for Sears before it was repurposed, and the place is massive.

I can’t give away any details about the project, so I’ll have to be careful what I say, but the first thing that struck me was how many people it takes to create a movie. I thought writing a book was hard! Hundreds and hundreds of people are putting in thousands of work hours bringing Percy Jackson to the big screen. We met set designers, prop workers, costume designers, videoengineers – the list goes on and on. The concept art they showed us wasjust amazing, but nothing compared to the real sets. I saw everything from the Met Museum to the palace of Hades. The props are also meticulously crafted. I held Percy’s sword Riptide, and it is exactly like I imagined it. As I walked through the offices, people kept coming up to me with books to sign for their children. That’s the other thing that struck me: How many Percy fans are working on this project. So many of them have children who’ve read the books. The enthusiasm level is very high, and it felt like everyone was committed to seeing the project done well.

In the late afternoon, we drove over to our event for Kidsbooks. They’d reserved a school auditorium for the night,and the place was packed to capacity, even though the Canucks wereplaying that night, which was stiff competition. Some people had driven2-3 hours to attend the event. I met librarians, home-schoolers, entireclasses who’d come with their teachers – really a great crowd. They were excited to learn the movie was filming right in their city, and infact some of the kids said, “My dad did the sets for that!” or “My mom is working on the costumes!” Pretty staggering how one movie can bring so many people into the process. I signed books for about two hours. My favorite comment came from a boy named Mac, who was toward the end of my line. He slumped across the table and sighed. “If I see one moregod-crazed little kid,” he announced, “I’m gonna blow it!” LOL.

My day was only starting, though. Our driver took us out to the set towatch the movie being filmed. They are doing nighttime outdoor scenesat the moment, so the filming was in a huge forested park north of thecity, and the crew is working only during the hours of dark, which means from 9PM-5AM. We arrived at the trailer lot, which is set up behind an abandoned school. Sounds like a Percy Jackson scene already,doesn’t it? First stop: the costume trailer, because I was not equipped for the extremely muddy, cold conditions out in the woods. I borrowed galoshes and a coat, and also got to see racks and racks of all the costumes labeled: Grover’s wardrobe, Luke’s armor, Percy’s schoolclothes, Annabeth’s jacket – it was pretty surreal.

We thendrove into the woods to the set through several security roadblocks.More rows of trailers and tents: portable cafes where you could get pretty much any food you can imagine (they don’t take lunch breaks, so food is delivered to the set constantly), costume repair shops,production trailers, trailers for the actors, etc., etc. The actual set was down in a valley with huge trees. Hundreds of extras in Greek armor with red and blue-plumed helmets milled around an enormous campfire,and battle standards for the cabins were flying. It very much felt like I had walked straight into Camp Half-Blood. We stood in the director’s pavilion and watched a few takes of a scene. I got to talk with Chris Columbus and meet Logan Lerman (Percy) and Alex Daddario (Annabeth).They all seemed genuinely energized about the whole project and said everything was going well. We didn’t stay long enough to meet Pierce Brosnan or Catherine Keener, who were coming later to the set. That would’ve been a thrill, of course, but we’d had an incredibly long day and I was ready to crash. We headed back into the city and I slept verywell, but all too briefly. (If you'd like to learn more about the moviei n progress here's an article from a local Vancouver newspaper.)

For more, visit Rick's blog: http://rickriordan.blogspot.com/

Erica Cerra has been cast as Hera and Marie Avgeropoulos has been cast as 'Aphrodite Girl'.  Don't know who Apphrodite girl is...haven't they already casted Silena?  Well...she might be a girl from the Aphrodite Cabin...

Erica Cerra

Marie Avgeropoulos

EDIT: There is also someone casted called "Student", being played by Maya Washington.  I really have no clue who "Student" is... so don't ask.

Maya Washington

Thanks MortalNet for the tip!

Hades and Persephone have been casted.  Steve Coogan will play Hades and Rosario Dawson will play Persephone.

  Steve Coogan

Rosario Dawson