Popverse's top stories

• Avengers: Doomsday is already ignoring one of the biggest lessons of the success of James Gunn’s Superman
• What to Watch This Weekend: All the Alien movies before Alien: Earth next week
• Luigi Mangione is "a story about the American Dream Gone Wrong," says James Patterson, and he's writing a book to prove it

There are so many things to love about Outlander and the fandom behind Diana Gabaldon’s 10 novels. It’s grown so much it’s ignited the creation of the prequel series, Outlander: Blood of my Blood which tells the story of love stories of both sets of parents of Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp. This series goes off-book as it travels back to the motherland. But the fandom is making it tricky to film the new series, because Scotland is rife with tourism thanks to Outlander. 

The Outlander production left Scotland by the second season, migrating to France. Then, it left for the Caribbean in the third season and the fourth in the Americas. In total, the original Outlander series shoots in Outlander for one and a half seasons, but that time spent has opened up the tourism industry for Scotland. However, for Blood of My Blood, the entire series takes place in Scotland. 

“As much as we love the fans, it can sometimes hamper our filming,” Executive Producer and Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts revealed. “We want to film at the Doune Castle in Scotland; It’s the home of the MacKenzies, also Midhope Castle. We’re very limited when we can film at both now, especially in the summer, because there’s so much tourism because of Outlander.”

Shooting on location is an expensive venture, but some shows it’s everything in helping sell the world building. In Outlander: Blood of My Blood it’s extremely necessary. 

“Scotland is #1 on the call sheet,” explained Roberts. “We want to feel it, we want to see it, we want to dive into the culture, foods, textures, and the vistas. It’s very important we put that in the show. When they walk onto the sets, put on the costumes, when they see the food is laid out, listen to the music, we really make sure it’s in the show as a character.” 

“When we do battles in World War I–we spent a lot of money for the amount of time in the screen, we put a lot into it. We want the audiences to come into the trenches with us. Everything we do we try to do as big or as rich as possible. I would say it’s integral to bringing the fans in and staying for an hour week-to-week."

In the Blood of My Blood footage that was shown at San Diego Comic-Con, there is already at least one location that will be a place of interest. Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) meet for the first time on a bridge and you can bet money it will be a new hotspot for rabid Sassenachs.  

“For Brian and Ellen, it was scripted that they meet on a bridge,” Roberts revealed. “It’s in the dialogue that they meet on the bridge. When we were scouting for locations the production team took me to that bridge. My first thought was that they built it from scratch because it was so perfect. I have a feeling that people will go there much like the stones at Craigh na Dun. Now, we bring our own stones, but that bridge is actually there [in Scotland].” 

Roberts went on to call it ironic that these locations are becoming popular because of the show. Outlander is now to Scotland tourism what the Lord of the Rings movies have been for New Zealand. There are a handful of UK-based tour groups built around taking fans to the known Outlander locations.  

“We get doors open in some places, [because they want to get a piece of that tourism], but in places that we have to go back to [it can be challenging]," Roberts shared.

“We need all those locations. That’s both a good and bad thing.”

Season 1 of Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres August 8 on the Starz network and is 10 episodes long.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions