Bennett Tara - The making of Outlander: the series: the official guide to seasons one & two

D IANA G ABALDON

I get a lot of totally undeserved praise for the Outlander show. Granted, I did write the books. And I did give the world Jamie, Claire, and Black Jack Randall (and a few hundred-odd other people). But my only part in the evolution of this fantastic show was to be Extremely Lucky.

You were so smart to hold out for Ron! all the fans exclaim. How did you approach him? Or did he come looking for you?

To be perfectly honest, Id never heard of Ronald D. Moore prior to the film rights being acquired by Sony and hadnt the slightest idea what a showrunner was or what one might do.

So what did happen?

Well, youve probably heard of a film option. In essence, this means that a production company pays a writer a modest amount of money in return for a period of time. During this period, the producer has the exclusive right to kill themselves trying to put together the necessary financing, staffing, and logistical package needed to make whatever film adaptation they have in mind.

If they succeed, they pay you a slightly larger sum, which is the purchase price of the film rights. (Thereafter, they own it in perpetuity, throughout the universe, forever. Youll never get it back.)

This is a hard thing to do, though, and most options lapse without anything happening. But theres always an outside chance that one will come to fruitionand this is why you dont want to do option agreements with people unless you trust them to do a reasonable adaptation of your work.

Frankly, most film people dont have the slightest intention of making a faithful adaptation of your work, though some are more honest than others about saying so. It therefore behooves a writer (and a writers agents) to be careful about whom you do options with.

That being so, in spite of constant requests, wed optioned the books only four times since Outlander was published in 1991. The first three options lapsed without result, as expected. The fourth was a guy named Jim Kohlberg.

We liked Jim (and we still do); hed made some very good small films, he genuinely loved the book, and he had a lot of persistence. I did tell him (as Ive told people for the last twenty-five years) that I didnt think it was possible to make a two-hour movie out of