Shōgun: bad news for fans of the Disney+ series

The creators of Shōgun rule out a second season of the epic Disney+ miniseries: "Start a factory, produce ten cars, and close it".

Image Credit: Hulu/Disney+

With the evolution of television times, it is very easy for a miniseries to suddenly become something more with the addition of two or three seasons, thus corrupting its limited nature (this is the case, for example, of Big Little Lies). However, this does not seem to be the case with one of the latest hits of the small screen: Shōgun.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, the creators of the Disney+ historical miniseries, ruled out the continuation of the saga of 16th-century feudal Japan with Cosmo Jarvis, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Anna Sawai, among others. The reason: they love the way it ends. The complex production planning and how much it costs to launch a series of this magnitude also aid in the decision not to do a second season. Indeed, the creators do not hesitate to use the parallel with parenting: “Oh, do you want another child now?”.

The screenwriter says that, when it came to adapting Shōgun for the screen, they made sure to tell him in his entirety, so that there was no need to extend the story: “We took the story of the series to the end of the book and made a point. We love how the book ends, it was one of the reasons we both knew we wanted to make it and we ended up at that exact point. It's happened to me before with series like this, where you build an entire factory and only release ten cars and call it a day."

“You know, we made this series a long time ago, because of the long post-production process. It's not like a normal television show, where if we were in a situation like this to promote it, not only would we be in the writers' room right now, but we'd be on set shooting season two right now." Everything seems to indicate that, when the last chapter of Shōgun is broadcast in a few weeks (the end is scheduled for April 23rd), we will say goodbye to the Japanese world and its power games... barring surprises.