Shogun has been one of the surprises of the season thanks to its broadcast on Disney. The new adaptation of the novel that James Clavell originally published in 1975 has won applause from the public and critics. The crossed stories of the English sailor John Blackthorne, the daimyo Yoshii Toranaga and the samurai Mariko Toda were fully explained in its first season, but it has not been enough for its producers.
In a surprising announcement that occurred this past Thursday night, the American network FX has announced the development of a second and third season of the series, by the same people responsible as the first: Justin Marks, Rachel Kondo and Michaela Clavell, daughter of the original author. The portal specialized in American films and series Deadline has been in charge of revealing the exclusive.
Little information is known about these continuations, since there is no definitive green light or possible release date. For the moment, the Hulu platform and the channel responsible for broadcasting it in North America have confirmed multiple negotiations with those in charge of safeguarding the rights of James Clavell, who died in 1994, with several first steps already marked on the calendar.
Throughout this coming summer, the production team has arranged a meeting of scriptwriters to work on possible options for these two new seasons. The contents on which they could work remain unknown, but Shogun’s novel is only the first of the so-called Asian Series, which the Australian-born writer with dual British-American nationality published between 1962 and 1993.
Shogun was the third book that Clavell released in 1975, but chronologically within the series it is the first of up to six books that sought, in the author’s words, “to explain the history of the Anglo-Saxons in Asia.” The stories already seen in Disney continue in Tai-Pan (1966), Gai-Jin (1993), King Rat (1962), Noble House (1981) and Whirlwind (1986). The bulk of these adventures are set in Japan, Hong Kong, Iran and a Japanese concentration camp in Singapore.
Given the success of the first season, viewers’ curiosity about where it was recorded grew exponentially. The Cinemaholic medium pointed out that several scenes from emblematic places in Japan were recorded, with the intention of using them throughout the ten chapters. Even so, they also confirmed that the intention to film the series in Japan was altered by the covid, taking production to Vancouver, Canada.