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Will There Be A Shogun Season 2? Showrunners Might Just Have An Answer
Producers and cast are anticipating a second season of FX's Shogun, a James Clavell's book series, which follows Lord Yoshio Toranaga's fight against the Council of Regents, which is disrupted by English sailor John Blackthorne.
The producers and cast of FX's Shogun, a series based on James Clavell's book, their thoughts on if the show might get a Season 2. The show follows Lord Yoshio Toranaga's fight against the Council of Regents, which is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of English sailor John Blackthorne. The producers and cast believe fans will eagerly await more content by the end of the series.
Will there be a Shogun season 2?
During an interview with The Direct, the cast and crew of FX’s Shogun series reflected on whether or not a Season 2 of the series is on the card. Co-creator and showrunner Justin Marks said, "I think we tell the complete story of the book. And we get to the end. I hope those who have read the book will see it's exactly where the book ends."
He continued, "And we're really excited about that because it's a very surprising ending that [James] Clavell does for the book. And it's kind of beautifully ambiguous in certain senses. But you know, that's the stories we tell it. I will also say it took us five years. This show is older than both of our children. You know, it's a lot."
Weather there will be a season 2 or not, the Co-creator and executive producer Rachel Kondo expressed how she hopes that Shogun will be a catalyst for audiences to encounter Japanese history in a new way. "But I will quote one of our lead actors, Cosmo Jarvis, who said the other night that he hopes that this production will kind of be a catalyst for audiences to encounter Japanese history in a new way. Because there's a lot of it," she said.
Marks added that he would also love for the project to inspire a new curiosity, "And I think of the movies I grew up on, The Jidaigeki (a genre in Japanese media mainly focusing on period dramas)... I'd love for this in the United States to inspire a new curiosity... That would push more movies, TV, and video games, and that space would be great."
Executive producer Michaela Clavell, the daughter of Shogun’s original author, also opened up about the possibility of a Season 2. She said, "You know, the audience will let us know whether there's, there is their appetite for that. We shall see. It's a great question. I wish I knew the complete answer, but I don't."
Clavell went on to praise the incredible research that went into making Shogun, "Well, Justin [Marks], from the very beginning, Justin and Rachel [Kondo] did incredible research, hired experts from all over the world, to give them the detail that was necessary to do justice to the history of the time. And [Hiroyuki Sanada] was a large part of that, as a producer and also an expert of that period. He brought an incredible layer of authenticity to the production, as did costume experts and etiquette experts. It was deliberate and well thought out from the very beginning that they would put tremendous effort into making this an authentic period piece of the times."
While the series depicts all of the events of the original Shogun book, it would not be outside of the realm of possibility for FX to continue with these characters in an original story.
About the series, Shogun
Shogun is a historical drama television limited series based on the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell. The novel was previously adapted into a 1980 television miniseries. The series premiered with its first two episodes on February 27, on Hulu and FX, with new episodes of the 10-episode series then releasing weekly.
FX announced a the adaptation of James Clavell's novel during the Television Critics Association's summer press tour in 2018. Executive producers include Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich, Michael De Luca, Michaela Clavell, Tim Van Patten, Eugene Kelly, and Ronan Bennett. Rachel Bennette will supervise, Tom Winchester will produce, Georgina Pope will co-produce, and Eriko Miyagawa will associate. Patten will direct the series, and Bennett will write. FX Productions will produce, with Sanada serving as a producer.
Shogun follows the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds and a mysterious female samurai; John Blackthorne, a risk-taking English sailor who ends up shipwrecked in Japan, a land whose unfamiliar culture will ultimately redefine him; Lord Toranaga, a shrewd, powerful daimyo, at odds with his own dangerous, political rivals; and Lady Mariko, a woman with invaluable skills but dishonorable family ties, who must prove her value and allegiance.
Clavell's Shogun is a fictionalized version of real events and history. The character of Blackthorne is loosely based on the historical English navigator William Adams, who in Japan rose to become a samurai under the strongest powerful daimyo and later the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose life and reign lasted from 1543 to 1616 and on whom Shogun's character Yoshii Toranaga is based.
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