Percy Jackson Movies Ranked: Both Films, Best to Worst

I rank the Percy Jackson movies on four things: how well each film tells its own story, how it treats the friendships at the center, how its set pieces land, and how well it suits a family audience. Only two films qualify, so the list is short, but the reasons are where the interest sits. This is my own opinion, and a number from somewhere else cannot explain why a Medusa scene works or a quest drags.

The Lightning Thief, directed by Chris Columbus, is the better of the two films, and it is the one I would put on first. It runs 118 minutes and cost $95 million, and it earned about $226 million worldwide according to Box Office Mojo. What carries it, in my opinion, is the setup: Percy (Logan Lerman) is a teenager with dyslexia and ADHD, living with his mother Sally and her unpleasant boyfriend Gabe, and a Fury attack on a museum trip pushes him toward Camp Half-Blood. Learning that Grover is a satyr and Mr. Brunner is the centaur Chiron (Pierce Brosnan) gives the film a real sense of a hidden world opening up. The cast around Lerman is stacked, with Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth, Sean Bean as Zeus, Steve Coogan as Hades and Uma Thurman as Medusa, so even a rushed scene has someone interesting in it. It could be argued that the road trip structure is episodic, but that suits a quest with a summer solstice deadline.

Sea of Monsters, directed by Thor Freudenthal, comes second: it is a smaller, tighter film at 106 minutes, with a $90 million budget and roughly $200 million worldwide, again per Box Office Mojo. Freudenthal was hired in June 2011 to replace Columbus, who stayed on as a producer, according to The Christian Science Monitor. The sequel opens with Thalia Grace sacrificing herself and becoming the pine tree that protects the camp, then adds Tyson, a cyclops who turns out to be Percy's half brother, and gives Clarisse (Leven Rambin) the quest when Mr. D (Stanley Tucci) hands it out. Those are good ideas. The trouble, as I see it, is that a poisoned tree, a Golden Fleece and a Colchis bull attack all have to be set up quickly, so the friendships get less room than in the first film. Tyson is the highlight for me, and Nathan Fillion as Hermes is a fun cameo.

Both films are rated PG in the US and the UK, which is the official guide to start from. In Australia, The Lightning Thief is rated M and Sea of Monsters is rated PG. I would not replace those ratings with my own, so if you are deciding for a 10 year old, check the scarier moments, such as the Fury attack in the first film, against what your child usually handles.

No studio statement explaining why a third film was never made has surfaced, so any single reason is speculation. What the numbers show is that the grosses fell from film to film: domestic takings dropped from about $88.8 million to about $68.6 million, and worldwide from about $226 million to about $200 million. No Percy Jackson feature film has been announced as of November 3, 2026, and the new Percy Jackson movie page tracks any change.

The story moved to television, with the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Season 3, adapting The Titan's Curse, premieres November 20, 2026, according to Disney+ Press. It is a series, so it sits outside the ranking. For how the screen versions differ from Rick Riordan's novels, see Percy Jackson books vs movies.

If you have one evening, watch The Lightning Thief first and then Sea of Monsters, following the Percy Jackson movies in order. Both are on Disney+ in the US, UK and Australia, as laid out under where to watch Percy Jackson. For the full picture of the pair, start at the Percy Jackson movies hub, or compare the money side on the Percy Jackson box office page.