Diana Gabaldon's 'Outlander' Novels to Be Made into a Television Series
July 10, 2012 · from the Word & Film archive
Outlander is finally getting the screen treatment its readers have demanded — and dreaded — for two decades: Ronald D. Moore, the writer-producer who turned Battlestar Galactica into prestige television, is developing Diana Gabaldon's series for TV with Sony Pictures Television.
The books resist every elevator pitch: a WWII combat nurse touches a standing stone in 1945 Scotland and wakes in 1743, where survival gradually becomes a marriage to a young Highlander named Jamie Fraser. Romance, yes — also battlefield medicine, Jacobite politics, and time-travel paradoxes handled with a naturalist's rigor. Twenty million copies argue the mix works.
Previous attempts imagined a feature film, which fans correctly diagnosed as madness: the first novel alone is 850 pages. Television's long form — and the post-Game of Thrones appetite for adult genre sagas — finally fits the material.
Update: Starz ordered the series, Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan became Claire and Jamie, and the show has run for the better part of a decade. The saga's screen and shelf lives are tracked on the Outlander page.
