By The surprising news came last month that veteran acting icon Hiroyuki Sanada had closed a deal to return as Lord Yoshii Toranaga for a second season of FX’s highly acclaimed period series “Shōgun”. The network then announced a third season was also being developed.
The surprise was that, up until that point, there was no hint that the highly acclaimed and commercially successful series would even get a second season as it was designed as a limited series.
The series served as a complete adaptation of James Clavell’s essentially standalone book. Clavell never wrote a direct sequel and his other works like “Tai-Pan,” “Gai-Jin,” “King Rat” and “Noble House” are all set centuries later with different characters.
Even the producers, just a month or two earlier, were saying in interviews there were no plans and no idea what kind of story they wanted to tell. Either way, a writers room is being assembled and will begin work this summer.
In a recent interview with THR, creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo offered an update on how its going:
Kondo: “There’s a lot of chaos but creative chaos, where we’re throwing everything that we have at the wall, seeing what sticks. It’s been exciting and nerve-wracking because, obviously, this is uncharted territory – we don’t have a roadmap, we just have history.”
Marks: “There’s a lot of great conspiracy theory in history, a lot of different theories about, ‘Oh, it was said that this went on, but this really went on,’ and those little darker corners are what we’ve really enjoyed exploring.
The third season is really an ending. We know where it starts, and we know where it ends, and we know who is there on that journey. We’re just focusing on part two right now to really make sure we can get to that point. But part two is, as second chapters go, kind of a darker chapter.”
Sanada, who is also producing the series, says the team “learned his [Clavell’s] spirit and the taste of storytelling. All his DNA is in our bodies, I believe.”
“Shōgun” Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai, Tadanobu Asano, Takehiro Hira, Tommy Bastow, and Fumi Nikaido co-starred in the series which premiered on FX and Hulu in February.
As it’s now a seasonal drama, it’s expected to dominate the upcoming Emmy Awards in the drama series category – especially with potential major rivals like “Succession” finished and “The Last of Us” not having a new season until next year.
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