Following the huge success of the FX series, “Shōgun”, which was originally intended to be a limited series, Disney decided to renew the show for two more seasons, with the writer’s room starting up over the summer.

The upcoming second and third seasons will be created by the show’s key creative partners, including Co-Creators, Executive Producers and Writers Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, Executive Producer Michaela Clavell, and series star and producer Hiroyuki Sanada are on board for the development. Production timing has not been locked in.

During a recent interview with the head of FX, John Landgraf, at the Emmy Awards, he revealed to Deadline, some new details on the upcoming second season of “Shōgun”.  When asked about what stage the development of the second season has gotten to, John replied:

We’re moving forward. Scripts are coming in, outlines are coming in, we’re trying to figure out where we’re going to shoot it, whether we’re going to shoot in the exact same manner and place we did before or whether we’re going to make some changes.

While “Shōgun” is set in Japan, it was actually filmed in Canada, and the show’s star, Hiroyuki Sanada, has spoken about how he would love to shoot the second season in Japan; John revealed why that is unlikely to happen.

I’ve always wanted to shoot in Japan. We tried really hard to figure out how to shoot this show in Japan. It is complicated because of the scale of the stage base and the scale of the production capacity there is just a little different. We’ve had trouble matching the location and the scale of what we’re capable of achieving there, with the scale of the ambition of the show. Unfortunately, medieval Japan, the castles are not around in their prior form and frankly if they were, you wouldn’t be able to shoot there anyway.

Since Disney has already renewed “Shōgun” for two more seasons, often FX will shoot seasons back to back; however, when John was asked if they are planning on doing this for “Shōgun”, he confirmed that wouldn’t be happening.

No, they’re separate narratives. They’re all part of one continuous narrative, with, with continuing characters, but they’re separate narratives. I don’t know that we’re certain there will three seasons, but in really looking at the characters in the history that’s being depicted here, albeit in a fictionalized manner, it still feels to us like three is the right number of seasons to really do it justice.

Roger’s Take: Based on how long it took FX to create “Shōgun” and that the next two seasons aren’t based on James Clavell’s original book, the writing team will have to spend a lot more time developing the story, especially as there will be a lot of pressure to match the quality.  It’s probably going to be a few years before we see the second season and even longer for the third.

You can watch the first season of “Shōgun” on Hulu and Disney+ now.

Are you looking forward to the return of “Shōgun”?  Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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