FX’s series Shogun, based on the best-selling book by James Clavell, debuted with acclaim and great ratings marking in at nine million for the premiere alone. The process to get the show started back in 2018 and had a painstakingly difficult path to trail with getting the minute details right. But could it be worth it for a second season?
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Shogun showrunners Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo look at the series as a finite project, and are not eager to jump into anything as lengthy soon.
“We took the story to the end of the book and put a period at the end of that sentence. We love how the book ends; it was one of the reasons why we both knew we wanted to do it — and we ended in exactly that place,” said Marks. “I’ve been party to this in the past with shows like this, where you build a whole factory, and it only pumps out 10 cars and closes up shop. It’s a bummer.”
Marks continued with how a producer wrote an instruction manual on how to create the right look for the time period of the show. He hopes he can maybe pass along that knowledge at some point.
“I just hope someone else–maybe a friend–needs a production primer on feudal Japan at some point, so I can be like, ‘Here you go, use this book. That will save you 11 months’.”
“[Shogun] is not like a normal TV series,” Kondo added. “If we were in a situation like this promoting it, we wouldn’t just be in the writers’ room already, we’d be on set shooting season two by now.”
The duo broke the nearly 1,000-page novel into a 10-episode series and managed to capture the cultural accuracy of 17th-century Japan with the help of famed Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada. Sanada stars, produces, but also became a cultural adviser, looking at everything from improving the scripts’ Japanese dialogue to casting many of the younger Japanese actors. He even made sure that the traditional costumes were accurate.
Shogun airs on FX and Hulu with new episodes airing Tuesdays. You can read our full review here.
