Trainspotting 2 on the fast track
IT was a seminal but disturbing Scottish film that demanded a sequel – until a feud between director and headline star quashed any hope of Trainspotting 2.
But now, after two decades, the longawaited second instalment of the film is back on the cards.
Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh revealed yesterday that director Danny Boyle and Scots star Ewan McGregor have held secret talks in Edinburgh.
The author said: ‘It was good to be in the same room again, like a band reunion. When you do something like Trainspotting you’re so bonded.’
Leith-born Welsh, who now lives in Miami, revealed that the film is on course for a cinema release in 2016 – on the 20th anniversary of the first film, which explored the squalid, ugly lives of drug addicts in Edinburgh.
The box office success of the wartsand-all movie prompted studio moguls to demand a reunion of the characters which made stars of McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Kevin McKidd, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Kelly Macdonald.
But it was stymied when Boyle and McGregor, who played anti-hero Renton, fell out.
The Oscar-winning director cast McGregor in his 2000 blockbuster, The Beach, but the Perth-born actor, 43, was dumped for the more ‘bankable’ Leonardo DiCaprio. However, the actor recently hinted: ‘I wouldn’t have been up for it ten years ago but I would be now.’
Of the row with Boyle, he added: ‘It was an unfortunate situation which wasn’t handled well. I was very upset but time has gone by and we put to bed bad feelings.’
Welsh, 56, said the new film – which will be ‘loosely based’ on the 2002 novel Porno, regarded as a literary sequel to Trainspotting – would cause even more controversy.
He said: ‘The attention is going to be even more intense because the first was such a great movie – and Danny’s such a colossus now.
‘When it comes out, it’s going to be the big movie talking-point of the year. We’re all protective of the Trainspotting legacy and we want to make a film that adds to that legacy.’