Speaking at the SXSW Film Festival, director Danny Boyle has named 2016 as the date he may tackle a sequel to his 1996 breakout smash TRANSPOTTING. The original caused quite the stir upon its release as both a book and film, mostly due to its bold and brave look at drugs and addiction. A sequel already exists in novel form, as writer Irvine Welsh, gave us PORNO a number of years back. John Hodge is currently working on a script and all the principle actors such as Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, and Kelly Macdonald, are expected to return. The only difficulty there may be getting McGregor, who blamed Studio interference for losing the lead role in THE BEACH to Leonardo DiCaprio, and hasn’t worked with Boyle and Hodge since.
Speaking about the project, Boyle had this to say:
This has been a long time coming. There’s always been this long term plan for TRAINSPOTTING 2, if John [Hodge] can produce a decent enough script, I don’t think there will be any barriers to Ewan [McGregor] or any of the cast coming back. I think they’ll wanna know that the parts are good so they don’t feel like they are letting anyone down. The reason for doing it again is that people cherish the original, people remember it or have caught up with it if they never saw because they were younger. So you want to make sure you don’t disappoint people. That will be the only criteria I think…It’s very loosely based on PORNO. There’s a couple of things that are based on the book, but obviously we’d have to have Irvine [Welsh] on board.
Finally Boyle made mention of when we may see the film:
Well, the ideal time would be PORNO in 2016. Because it was 1996 when TRAINSPOTTING came out. Twenty years, it’s like wow, where did that go.
TRAINSPOTTING is one of those films where I think a sequel in unnecessary, but I’m also very interested to see what has happened to the characters. With such an eclectic bunch, all very specific to their time and place in the world, it will be grand to see what each of them is doing, have they grown up, slipped into any old vises etc.
We’ve still got a three year wait, so hopefully Boyle will be putting the band back together over the coming years.
