TWIN TOWN WILL RETURN
Director Kevin Allen says sequel will tackle the debate around cannabis legalisation
TWIN town director Kevin Allen has announced plans for a sequel to Wales’ favourite flick are back on again. In 2009 the filmmaker told Wales on Sunday the follow-up would be subtitled because stars Rhys and Llyr Ifans were to speak Arabic.
Then the director announced the project was off because he had become a pig farmer in Ireland.
But almost 20 years on from his 1997 picture he has revealed Julian and Jeremy Lewis WILL return. “I was looking for a new hook and with the political reality that is going on now, it just feels like the right time to write a sequel,” Kevin, who was behind last year’s Under Milk Wood, said. “It never felt right to do during the Blair years – sense.” The sequel will be set around Llanelli and tackle the debate around cannabis legalisation. “It will be a very political film,” Kevin said. “It’s a comedy, but it’s based on a miscarriage of justice so it’s basically a political film. “The zeitgeist of homegrown cannabis is now the frame in which I’m setting the new one. “The debate of legalising cannabis will be the main part of the film. It’s happening in America and I’m resetting it more Llanelli way.” He made the revelations at this week’s Lord Mayor’s Summer Honour’s Ball at Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall. He was awarded for his services to film. “Swansea is my home and we recently came back,” he told the Swansea Evening Post. “We’ve been all over – LA, Ireland, and now we’re back here to it wouldn’t have made bring our kids up.”
He praised the mayor’s honours, which raised thousands of pounds for local charities.
“It’s really great and it’s a great thing for Swansea,” he said.
In 2013 he had planned to call the film Swansea Al Akbar – Swansea is great – because of the twins’ love of their home town.
The pair were set to return to Swansea from Morocco – where they fled to at the end of the first movie – to attend the funeral of Mr Mort.
Filmgoers met him at the start of Twin Town selling the brothers’ prescription drugs from the back of a stolen BMW with his wife. Tragically Ronnie Williams, who played Mr Mort, took his own life in 1997.
Then Kevin went off the idea of a sequel.
“There won’t be a Twin Town sequel now,” he said in 2011.
“It just didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to go to Swansea. I think it is best left as it is. I just did not have the feeling for it.”