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Percy Jackson actor Walker Scobell was officially replaced after growing too tall.
A faithful, entertainingPercy Jacksonadaptation has been a long coming, but fortunately, it arrived on the silver screen with a splash in 2023.
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Gone are the days of needlessly aged-up Demigods and strange plot choices (don’t worry, Logan Lerman – you weren’t the problem in our eyes). Unlike the 2010 film adaptation by 20th Century Studios, the Disney+ televised series takes things slow enough to immerse guests in the world of Percy Jackson and friends while also keeping them hooked on the preteen’s adventures in his newly discovered world of gods and monsters.
This time around, Percy Jackson is portrayed by Walker Scobell. The young actor has been praised extensively by critics for his take on the 12-year-old boy from New York who embarks upon a dangerous quest after discovering that his biological father is the sea god Poseidon – AKA one of the 12 Olympian godsin Greek mythology.
Over the course of the show’s first season, Scobell managed the not-so-easy task of nailing both Percy Jackson’s sassy wit (a trademark of the original author, Rick Riordan’s, writing style) and the character’s more emotional moments. The one thing that audiences did pick out was something beyond Scobell’s control: his height.
As is eventually the case with all child actors, Scobell – just like his costars Leah Sava Jeffries (Annabeth Chase) and Aryan Simhadri (Grover Underwood) – has changed a lot over the past few years. Percy Jackson and the Olympians fans couldn’t help but notice the physical differences between Scobell in the show’s first episode versus the last. According to Teen Vogue, Scobell grew six inches in nine months.
Puberty is an obstacle all long-term projects involving child actors must tackle. A similar instance is Daniel Radcliffe, whose voice changed so much during the filming of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone(2001) that an audio double was (allegedly) brought in to dub his lines in the movie’s last few scenes.
Fortunately, ifPercy Jackson and the Olympians – which recently started filming its second season in Vancouver – is following the same timeline as Rick Riordan’s original book series, a canonical year will have passed between the first and second seasons, meaning an audio replacement isn’t necessary for continuation purposes.
That’s the good news. The bad news, however, is that Scobell did reportedly lose another high-profile role due to the rapid changes to his height and voice.
According to Shawn Levy – director ofDeadpool & Wolverine(2024), the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe smash hit that’s currently on the cusp of breaking a billion at the box office – Scobell was supposed to star in the superhero flick as Kidpool, one of the film’s many Deadpool variants, but had to be axed.
“If Walker Scobell had stopped evolving right before puberty, he absolutely would’ve been Kidpool,” Levy told Entertainment Weekly, confirming that they were forced to replace the young actor.
“It was his dream. Ryan and I reached out to him once we realized he was now going to be too old, both too tall and with his voice too low. Puberty is what it is, and all the Hollywood dreams in the world can’t stop it. So we did call Walker and explain why he couldn’t be Kidpool, and he was completely understanding.”
Had Scobell played Kidpool, this would’ve marked the second time that he portrayed another version of a character originated by Ryan Reynolds. The duo previously starred as the same character at two different ages in Netflix’s The Adam Project (2022), which was also directed by Levy.
Notably, The Adam Projectalso starred Jennifer Garner as Ellie Reed, the title character’s mother. Garner appeared inDeadpool & Wolverine as the assassin Elektra Natchios, a role Garner last portrayed in Elektra (2005).
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While Scobell may not have got his Marvel moment (not yet, at least), the role of Kidpool did go to another worthy candidate. The youthful version of the “merc with a mouth” was instead voiced by Inez Reynolds, the seven-year-old daughter of Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively.
The pair’s baby, Olin Reynolds, also starred in the film as an even younger variant of Deadpool, fittingly known as Babypool. Meanwhile, four-year-old Betty Reynolds was credited as “Hugh Jackman Wrangler” in the film’s credits, and nine-year-old James Reynolds is credited as playing a Screaming Mutant.
Would you have liked to see Walker Scobell appear in Deadpool & Wolverine?
