It’s been quite some time since one of Irvine Welsh’s controversial novels has made it to the big screen (the last one, Acid House was released in 1998, just two years after cult hit Trainspotting), but it sounds like that’s about to change.
According The Playlist, Welsh has revealed that a film version of Filth, his darkly comic 1998 novel, is set to begin production in January 2012 boasting a rock solid cast that includes James McAvoy, Jamie Bell and Alan Cumming.
Sort of an Edinburgh-set version of Bad Lieutenant, Filth follows Bruce Robertson, a drug-addled, womanizing, misanthropic police officer investigating a race-related murder that may net him a promotion despite his tendency to get sidetracked snorting cocaine, making sexually harassing phone calls to his friend’s wife and dealing with a tapeworm that acts as his conscience.
McAvoy is set to play Robertson, presumably the role he was alluding to when he described an upcoming character as “extreme” and “full-on mental” in an interview with The Daily Record earlier this year. Bell will be Robertson’s young partner Lennox (the character also has his own follow-up in Welsh’s 2008 novel Crime), and Cumming will play Robertson’s beleaguered boss, Bob Toal.
Welsh will be acting as the film’s producer and of director Jon S. Baird, Welsh tells The Playlist:
“I’ve been trying to get Filth made with different producers and directors for years. Jon did a revised screenplay which was absolutely brilliant: he’s captured and kept the essence of the main protagonist but he’s done a lot of interesting things with it as well. He’s kind of rendered it very, very cinematic and it’s going to make a great film with that cast.”
Welsh fans can also look forward to the October release of Ecstasy, an independent Canadian production of his 1996 short story collection.
