If you’re a big fan of Danny Boyle, then you’ll know that a Trainspotting sequel has been on the cards for a while. He’s certainly talked it up in interviews saying that he really wanted to do it. But now in another interview, he has confirmed that the film is going ahead, with the original cast and writer behind it.
The film will be based on the book Porno, written by Irvine Welsh as a sequel to Trainspotting. It is set ten years after the events of Trainspotting and focuses on the main characters Begbie, Renton, Spud and Sick Boy, only this time set against the porn industry as opposed to heroin addiction.
Boyle confirms that the original cast are on board and keen to get going. Robert Carlyle was quoted elsewhere saying he would do it “tomorrow for nothing” and even Ewan McGregor who was more skeptical, saying a sequel would be a “terrible shame”, is reportedly on for it.
We certainly have a plan for a sequel to Trainspotting, but that’s a way down the road, I think we’ll work together again before then, I hope we do anyway.
Boyle has said that due to that change from heroin to porn and the age difference, the film will be very different:
Oh, it’s gonna be so different. The idea of it is that take the same actors, playing the same characters, in the same time, so all that’s the same – but they’re forty. It’s middle aged and that’s what it becomes about. Like when you’re twenty you think you can do anything with your body basically, the risks you take. When you look back at what you’ve done you think oh my god and they hit forty and they can’t do that anymore.
And it’s triggered by Begbie, the Robert Carlyle character comes out of jail. So you can keep him in jail for five years, ten years, fifteen, whatever the story needs. And in the book he escapes from jail. Very funny and very crazy and then he re-ignites the whole chain of friendship if you like, but they are now different guys trapped like so many people are really, trapped in their hometown.
It would also be about the audience who first saw the film cause they also would have aged and all those questions about am I gonna have kids, who am I gonna live with, what am I gonna do in my life, am I getting ill, all those things, it becomes about that. So it actually could be a really boring film, (laughs) the complete opposite of Trainspotting!
Boyle has said before that he needs to wait for his cast to age before he gets down to shooting Porno and as he says it will be a long way off before that happens.
Personally this is one sequel I would love to see. The book is hilariously funny and revisiting those characters not exactly in their prime will be great.
For me, Trainspotting is one of the finest British films of the past 25 years, and for only a sophomore feature it displays a mind boggling confidence in direction and style. Even after 15 years it has barely aged, showing that Boyle was clearly a director way before his time. The film is also underrated as a depiction of drug abuse and is far more honest than Darren Aronofsky‘s Requiem for a Dream.
Many right wing publications accused the film of glorifying heroin abuse, when actually what it showed it exactly how it is. It showed that heroin in short term is a kick and fun but in the long term, wrecks and shatters your life. It is truthful, they showed both sides equally, only they did it in a way that was entertaining as opposed to relentlessly depressing the hell out of its audience, which was the method Aronofsky took.
Many critics focused in on the lines: “Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” and “Take the best orgasm you’ve ever had… multiply it by a thousand, and you’re still nowhere near it.” But they hastily forgot the cot death and the deeply unsettling cold turkey sequences that show the destructive force of heroin abuse against the euphoric high points.
I can’t wait to see Danny Boyle, that cast and those characters together again. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on any further developments.
Source: Star Pulse