The pieces are coming into place on the upcoming second season of FX‘s Emmy-winning drama series Shōgun, which will begin filming in January. Cosmo Jarvis has closed a deal to reprise his role as English pilot John Blackthorne, joining Hiroyuki Sanada, whose pact last May to return as Lord Yoshii Toranaga paved the way to Shogun‘s renewal after being originally conceived as a limited series. Sanada, a producer on the original installment, has been upped to executive producer for Season 2; Jarvis is joining the series’ producing ranks as co-executive producer.
FX has revealed more details about the premise of the second season. It “will be “a wholly original new chapter to the first season,” which was an adaptation of James Clavell’s bestselling novel, the network said.
The new chapter will take place 10 years after the events in the first season, in which Lord Toranaga (Sanada) fought for his survival as his enemies in the Council of Regents united against him. When a mysterious European ship was found marooned in a nearby village, its pilot John Blackthorne (Jarvis) shared vital strategic secrets with Toranaga that tipped the scales of power in his favor to win a century-defining civil war.
Season 2 “continues the historically-inspired saga of these two men from different worlds whose fates are inextricably entwined,” FX says.
Series creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, who recently wrapped a writers’ room, have spoken about the challenges of conceiving a second season without a blueprint as none of the other novels in Clavell’s Asian Saga have the same characters as Shōgun, the third book in the series. But the duo has revealed in interviews that they still leaned on the Shōgun novel, incorporating elements and characters that they didn’t use in Season 1.
Production on Season 2 is slated to begin in January in Vancouver where the first installment was shot. The limited series was originally intended to film in Japan, and Sanada in September hinted of a potential Season 2 relocation to the Asian country.
Back then, FX chairman John Landgraf tempered expectations about a Japan shoot.
“It is complicated because of the scale of the stage base and the scale of the production capacity there is just a little different,” he said about filming Shōgun there. “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.”
Indeed, filming will remain put in Canada. Shōgun, the most-viewed program in FX history, is produced by FX Productions.
Marks and Kondo are executive producers alongside Michaela Clavell, Edward L. McDonnell, Michael De Luca and Sanada Jarvis will serve as co-executive producer.
Sanada and Jarvis were the two surviving main characters from Season 1 as the other two, played by Anna Sawai and Tadanobu Asano, were killed off.
The first season of Shōgun, which streams on Hulu and Disney+, won 18 Emmy Awards, setting the record for the most Emmy Awards by a series in a single season and delivering FX’s Outstanding Drama Series Emmy. Sanada became the first Japanese actor to win the Emmy for Lead Actor in a Drama Series, and Sawai made history as the first actress of Asian descent to win Lead Actress in the same category.
