Naman Shrestha
Taking inspiration from his own eponymous book series, Rick Riordan teams up with Jonathan E. Steinberg to create Disney+’s ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians,’ an action-adventure fantasy series that features Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson, Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth Chase, and Aryan Simhadr as Grover Underwood. After the Greek God Zeus accuses Percy Jackson of stealing his thunderbolt, the latter embarks on an adventurous and dangerous quest to return Zeus’ bolt and prevent the birth of an all-out war among the Olympian Gods.
With the help of his new friends — Annabeth and Grover — the 12-year-old Percy Jackson gets closer than ever to the answer he seeks about his life. Will he be able to finally find his place in the world and know his purpose? As Percy traverses across America and the mythical world of Olympian Gods, the viewers can’t help but scratch their heads wondering if the show is filmed on location or not.
Where is Percy Jackson and the Olympians Filmed?
‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ is primarily filmed in British Columbia, particularly in Metro Vancouver. Reports suggest that a few portions are also shot across different US states, including Tennessee, Nevada, and New York. The principal photography for the debut season got underway in early June 2022 under the working title ‘Mink Golden’ and wrapped up in about eight months or so, in February 2023.
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Metro Vancouver, British Columbia
The shooting of the action-adventure show takes place in several locations in Metro Vancouver AKA Greater Vancouver in the westernmost province of British Columbia. A major portion of the filming transpires in Vancouver, a port city in the southwestern part of the province. To tape a few scenes, the cast and crew also move east of the downtown area of Vancity, particularly at the Burnaby campus of Simon Fraser University at 888 University Drive West, utilizing the stunning landscaped vistas from the top of the Burnaby Mountain. Mammoth Studios, located at 2880 Underhill Avenue in the city is also one of the shooting sites for ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians.’
For lensing a few scenes of the first season of the show, the production team was spotted at Westminster Pier Park, an award-winning waterfront boardwalk in New Westminster in August 2022. Lying on the northern shore of the Fraser River, the Royal city is famous for its Victorian-era buildings, rich history, museums as well as vibrant art, culture, and entertainment scene. The world-famous Industrial Light & Magic’s Vancouver studio, situated at 21 Water Street Suite 400 in the heart of the Gastown district of Vancouver is also where the show is lensed.
In a NYCC roundtable interview for The Cosmic Circus, James Bobin opened up about his experience helming a few episodes of the fantasy novel into a television series for the screen. On being asked to shed some light on the filming process of the first season’s flag sequence, he said, “Yeah, it’s a big one. I mean also it was a huge number of extras. That whole scene has, on both sides, are like 60 kids. And so that’s a lot of people in a lot… Like anything in life, when you have a lot of extras, things get complicated and you do those big shots first to get them out of the way and you kind of pass it down to the smaller moments.”
He added, “So that’s what I was focused on, in a way that I think a lot of the show is seen from Percy’s point of view. So I was really keen that the capture the flag sequence, as big as is at the beginning, it essentially becomes what happened to Percy that day. And that’s what it’s.” Stressing on the point that every “action needs narrative,” the British filmmaker stated, “Without it, you just don’t care. And so it’s important, there’s a story within the action and that story’s about, this is Percy learning his ability, which is great. And so that’s what that’s about to me. It was a fun thing to shoot.”
A few portions of the stunning sequence from season 1 were taped by the water. Though the tides posed some issues, the director shared that he kept monitoring the tide chart and ultimately everything turned out fine and the shooting went smoothly. Talking about the careful taping of the high-octane fight scenes, Bobin said, “…by the time we came to shoot, they’d rehearse the stunting many times over. So attached to the actual physically shooting stuff there weren’t a lot of takes. We just got it right every time. And the choreography worked pretty great straight off the bat because they’d been rehearsing it a lot. And that is the key thing to any choreography of fights, particularly, is rehearse it.”
Other Locations in the World
The production of ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ seemingly takes the filming unit to various cities across America. For instance, some sources hint that a few scenes, probably exteriors, are lensed in Nashville, Tennessee and around the world-famous Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas Boulevard, Nevada. Reports also suggest that the Brooklyn borough of New York City served as another one of the filming sites.
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