Percy Jackson bids to steal Harry Potter’s thunder

Fans of the boy wizard Harry Potter are up in arms at the magical antics of Percy Jackson, the 12-year-old hero of a series of books they consider to be nothing short of a rip-off of JK Rowling's bestselling saga.

Despite the fact that Percy Jackson & The Olympians, written by Rick Riordan, has been around for four years and is into its fifth book, the similarities between the two series has seemingly only now become an issue because of the imminent release of a Hollywood film adaptation of the first Pery Jackson book.

Percy Jackson is a 12-year-old boy with dyslexia who inhabits a world where the Greek gods are alive and well and living on the top floor of the Empire State Building. When Percy finds he is the demigod son of the Greek god Poseidon, he is sent to Camp Half Blood on Long Island to school with other demigods.

Potter fans have let rip on blogs and internet forums, discussing how a boarding school full of children with supernatural powers is a tad familiar to their own Hogwarts. Some point out that the use of the 600th floor of the Empire State Building as the setting for Mount Olympus is uncomfortably close to Potter's route to another world, Platform 9 3/4 in London's King's Cross station. But even before publication of his first book, Riordan was wise to the fact that comparisons would be made between his and Rowling’s worlds.

On his own blog, Riordan writes of the latter comparison: "The idea of a magical gateway to another land wasn't invented in the Harry Potter series. It's as old as children's literature. Anyone remember the wardrobe into Narnia? Or the phantom tollbooth? All of these stem from mythology, and the idea of a secret entrance that led into the Underworld."

The rivalry between fans of an incipient franchise on one hand and a brand coming to the end of its life on the other (the Potter films will climax in 2011 with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II) can only get fiercer.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is due in cinemas in February (trailer above) and will star Uma Thurman as Medusa, Pierce Brosnan as a centaur, Steve Coogan as Hades and Sean Bean as Zeus. Seventeen-year-old Logan Lerman will play 12-year-old Percy.

But the most telling production note for Potter fans is the identity of the director, Chris Columbus, who helmed the first two Harry Potter films and produced the third.

Elizabeth Gabler, the president of Fox 2000, which owns the rights to the Jackson books says: "[Columbus] of all people was aware that there are some similarities to Harry Potter. Who better than Chris to keep it away from that? He's very sensitive to not repeat what they did in those films."

Except, perhaps, the use of the fantasy genre staple of a downtrodden boy who discovers he has magical powers.