The project is real, but it has not been ordered to series yet
Disney+ and 20th Television are developing a live-action adaptation of Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles trilogy. Riordan is working on the project with Angela Robinson, whose television credits include True Blood, The L Word and How to Get Away with Murder.
Riordan and Robinson are attached to write and executive produce. Rebecca Riordan, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Jeremy Bell are also among the executive producers reported for the project.
Development is the important word here. There is no announced cast, premiere date or production start, and the project still needs to make the jump from development to a formal series order.
The Red Pyramid gives Disney a very different mythology show
The first Kane Chronicles novel begins with Carter and Sadie Kane, siblings who have largely grown up apart after their mother's death. Their father Julius is an Egyptologist whose experiment at the British Museum releases the Egyptian god Set and gets Julius removed from the picture in spectacular fashion.
Carter and Sadie discover that their family is tied to ancient pharaohs, magical bloodlines and the House of Life, an organization of magicians with a complicated relationship to the gods.
The story expands through The Throne of Fire and The Serpent's Shadow, eventually building toward the threat of Apophis and a wider conflict over order and chaos.
Netflix once wanted three movies
Riordan first announced a Netflix adaptation in 2020. The plan was to develop feature films based on the trilogy, beginning with The Red Pyramid.
Scripts went through development for several years, but production never started. In 2024, Riordan said the project had entered turnaround and the rights had reverted to him.
At the time, he also pointed to a broader contraction in film and streaming development, with companies becoming much more selective about expensive new projects.
Disney's version is therefore a fresh adaptation rather than a continuation of the Netflix work.
20th Television already knows how to build a Riordan series
The obvious comparison is Percy Jackson and the Olympians. 20th Television produces that Disney+ adaptation as well, with Riordan and Rebecca Riordan deeply involved in protecting and reshaping the source material for television.
Kane Chronicles would give Disney a second mythology branch from the same author, but one built around Egyptian gods rather than Camp Half-Blood's Greek foundation.
The literary worlds are connected. Carter and Sadie have crossed paths with Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase in Riordan's crossover stories. No television crossover has been announced.
Television may fit the books better than the old movie plan
The trilogy has a structural feature that immediately benefits from additional running time: Carter and Sadie alternate as narrators.
Their different voices are not decorative. Carter has spent years traveling with his father and studying history, while Sadie grew up in London with a much more confrontational personality and a very different relationship to the Kane family.
The books also spend substantial time explaining the House of Life, Egyptian magic and the rules surrounding gods inhabiting human hosts. A feature film can certainly simplify all of that. A series does not have to simplify quite so aggressively.
Angela Robinson has two protagonists to protect from the mythology machine
The adaptation can become enormous very quickly: Set, Horus, Isis, Anubis, Ra, Apophis and a globe-spanning magical organization all arrive across the trilogy.
The core is still a brother and sister rebuilding a relationship while discovering what their family has withheld from them.
Robinson and Riordan therefore have a fairly clear dramatic anchor before the visual-effects work starts swallowing the budget.
The next meaningful announcement will be a green light or a cast
There is currently no Carter Kane, no Sadie Kane and no release window. Disney+ has not announced an episode count either.
That caution matters because Kane Chronicles has already demonstrated how far a project can travel through Hollywood development without actually being made.
For now, the material has moved from Netflix's abandoned movie strategy to the same television studio already producing Percy Jackson. That is considerably more concrete than a rumor, but still one step short of cameras rolling.
