The Ronin can confirm that Swedish-French television director Charlotte Brändström has joined the FX samurai series Shōgun. She recently worked on Amazon’s Lord of The Rings series, Netflix’s The Witcher, Outlander, Jupiter’s Legacy, and The Man In The High Castle.

FX has hired Hiroyuki Sanada (Westworld, John Wick 4, The Last Samurai), British actor Cosmo Jarvis, and Anna Sawai (F9: The Fast Saga) as the leads of Shōgun.

Shōgun is set in feudal Japan. It charts the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds and a mysterious female samurai: John Blackthorne (Jarvis), a risk-taking English sailor who ends up shipwrecked in Japan, a land whose unfamiliar culture will ultimately redefine him; Lord Toranaga (Sanada), a shrewd, powerful daimyo, at odds with his own dangerous, political rivals; and Lady Mariko (Sawai), a woman with invaluable skills but dishonorable family ties who must prove her value and allegiance.

The new project currently shooting in Vancouver was written by Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, which is based on the novel by author James Clavell. It had been adapted for American television back in 1980 and starred legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune (Yojimbo, Seven Samurai) as Lord Yoshii Toranaga. 

Other actors on the show consist of Tadanobu Asano, Fumi Nikaido, Tokuma Nishioka, Takehiro Hira, Ako, Shinnosuke Abe, Yasunari Takeshima, Hiroto Kanai, Toshi Toda, Hiro Kanagawa, Néstor Carbonell, Yuki Kura, Tommy Bastow, Moeka Hoshi, Yoriko Doguchi, and Yuka Kouri.

We also exclusively reported the series would have Reprisal’s Jonathan van Tulleken on the directing team.