It stars Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson alongside an ensemble cast that includes Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson, Catherine Keener, Kevin McKidd, Joe Pantoliano, and Uma Thurman.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was released theatrically in the United States on February 12, 2010, by 20th Century Fox.

Zeus accuses Poseidon's demigod son, Percy Jackson, of stealing his master lightning bolt.

However, Zeus declares that unless the bolt is returned to Mount Olympus before midnight of the Summer Solstice, war will be waged between all the gods.

On a school trip to the MOMA, he is attacked by Alecto, a Fury masquerading as his substitute English teacher Mrs. Dodds, who demands the bolt.

His teacher gives Percy a very powerful cosmic weapon which looks like a pen, and instructs Grover to take him to Camp Half-Blood — a secret sanctuary for demigod children on Long Island, leaving behind his mother Sally's abusive husband and Percy's stepfather, Gabe Ugliano.

Percy is visited by his uncle Hades's apparition, who reveals that the Minotaur abducted Sally to the Underworld to trade for the bolt.

He also gives him a pair of flying winged Converse All-Stars stolen from Hermes, and Luke's favorite shield.

At a garden center in New Jersey, with help from Grover and Annabeth, Percy manages to decapitate Medusa and takes the first pearl from her corpse.

At the Parthenon in Nashville, Percy uses the shoes to retrieve the second pearl from the crown of a statue of Athena there, and Grover kills a Hydra with Medusa's head.

Percy snaps out of the spell after hearing the voice of Poseidon through telepathy telling him not to eat any more flowers.

Percy frees Grover and Annabeth from the flowers' effects; they locate the final pearl in the casino and escape.

As they only have three pearls, Grover remains behind, while Percy, Annabeth, and Sally teleport to the Empire State Building, the secret entrance to Olympus.

After a battle across Manhattan, Percy defeats Luke, returns the bolt to Zeus, and reconciles with his father.

[20] During production, Riordan was disappointed with the changes made to the story and warned the studio that it would likely alienate the readers of the book series that it was depending on to buy tickets.

In two emails commenting at length on a draft of the script that he posted to his blog in 2018, he specifically warned the studio that trying to make the story more attractive to a teenage audience by aging the characters and including some profanity in the script might move a significant portion of the books' readers to leave the theater in disgust long before the movie ended.

He also felt the introduction of Persephone's pearls as a plot device made no sense, having no basis in mythology and distracting Percy from his goal of recovering the stolen lightning.

[4] On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 49% based on reviews from 150 critics, with an average score of 5.30/10.

The site's consensus reads: "Though it may seem like just another Harry Potter knockoff, Percy Jackson benefits from a strong supporting cast, a speedy plot, and plenty of fun with Greek mythology.

[29] This comment later sparked a satirical fan creation with precisely that title, narrated by Stephen Fry.