EXCLUSIVE
SHŌGUN The blockbuster historical saga gets an ambitious 2024 update.
As if it isn’t hard enough making a 10-hour epic with sieges, swordfights and shipwrecks, the makers of Shōgun also had to deal with bears trying to eat their sandwiches. ‘One day a black bear got into the craft service line,’ laughs writer/creator Justin Marks. ‘We had a 3,000-strong cast and crew. We were at war with the elements. But every day it was “Bear, bear, bear!” over the radio.’
Rebuilding an entire feudal Japanese fishing village on a remote coast of Vancouver, Marks – alongside co-writer and creator (and wife), Rachel Kondo – took on one of the most ambitious adaptations in historical fiction bringing James Clavell’s 1975 hefty bestseller to the screen.
‘I think we’re both of the generation where Shōgun was a book on everyone’s parents’ nightstand,’ says Marks. ‘We all understood what it stands for. But I knew there were aspects that needed updating. It became the cardinal sin that we didn’t want to commit: to tell a story that we’ve already seen before.’
Framed around the (real) battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and the rise of the daimyō Toranaga, the sprawling saga was last filmed in 1980 as a miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. But for Marks and
Kondo, the big mistake made back then was in showing everything through the eyes of Chamberlain’s shipwrecked English sailor, John Blackthorne (now played by Cosmo Jarvis).
‘This was an opportunity for me to connect with my Japanese herita
