For years we’ve been hoping for a Trainspotting 2. It may seem odd that an independent British film about heroin addicts in Scotland is one of the most talked about potential sequels out there, but Danny Boyle’s film – which helped intro audiences around the world to actors Ewan McGregor, Ewan Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle – was a dynamo upon its original release, announced the future Oscar-winning director as one of the great talents of his generation and adorning colleges across America with poster that insisted we all “Choose life.”
The original novelist, Irvine Welsh, wrote a 2002 follow-up to Trainspotting called Porno in which Rent Boy, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie find themselves in the world of pornography instead of hard drugs, leading us all to wonder when Boyle would schedule a sequel. It’s been on-and-off Boyle’s radar ever since, but according to Robert Carlyle – doing the press line for “Once Upon a Time” at Comic-Con 2013 – it’s finally going to happen.
“I think for the for the first time I can actually say yes, it’s going to happen,” Robert Carlyle told Athena Stamos of CraveOnline. “[Danny Boyle] is ready to do it now. He feels that the cast, himself and the rest of the lads are at the right age to do that now. Because he always had the idea to do it, but he wanted it to be as it was in the follow-up book. They’re fifteen years older. And I certainly look fifteen years older now so it’s time to do it.”
It certainly does seem to be the perfect time to for Danny Boyle to make Trainspotting 2, whether or not he calls it Porno. Ewan McGregor recently said he was ready to return to his starmaking role a Rent Boy, despite publicly stating that he didn’t think Welsh’s follow-up novel was particularly good, and after well-publicized falling out with Danny Boyle after the director gave the starring role in 2000’s The Beach to Leonardo DiCaprio instead of his longtime thespian collaborator.