WITH Harry Potter and friends set to graduate from Hogwarts shortly, movie moguls are desperately searching for another all-conquering young-readers series they can turn into a billion-dollar film franchise.

Percy Jackson's first big-screen adventure has certainly been set-up to be the next Potter - they even brought in the director who kickstarted Harry to kickstart Percy - but most of the comparisons to JK Rowling's books-turned-movies are unfair, as PJ&TLT is more concerned with following an old-school formula that Potter and co just happen to follow too.

Based on Rick Riordan's popular Olympians series, PJ&TLT cleverly re-imagines the ancient Greek myths as real and secretly co-existing with our own world - Mt Olympus is at the top of a skyscraper and Medusa owns a lovely little gardening supplies centre for example.

The teenage Jackson (Lerman) - a troubled youth with ADHD and dyslexic - learns that not only is he the son of Poseiden, god of water, but that he has also been accused of stealing Zeus's master lightning bolt, which is apparently the most powerful weapon of mass destruction in the world but comes off as a lightsaber with built in Force Lightning capabilities.

Thrown into a new world of minotaurs, centaurs and hydras (oh my!), Jackson and his new friends must overcome challenges of Herculean proportions to rescue his mum (Keener) from the grip of Hades, uncover the real lightning thief and save the world.

It's rivetting stuff, if a little formulaic, but at least the series lands on safe and entertaining ground, which is what they attempted (and failed) to do with the first two Potter films. What's surprising is that Chris Columbus has actually done a good job here - the same cannot be said for his Potter efforts.

But enough with the Potter comparisons - new-found powers, hidden magical worlds, fantastical creatures, and trios of teens solving mysteries weren't exactly new ground when JK Rowling unleashed them in the '90s.