A book sequel to break-out smash Trainspotting already exists in the form of Porno, written by Irvine Welsh and has been heavily rumored to be making its way to the big screen.
Back in 2010, hot on the heels of 127 Hours, Danny Boyle revealed that he at some point hopes to revisit one of his earlier works by making a sequel to the 1996 film.
Now the time has come! While promoting his new film, Trance, Boyle announced that longtime collaborator John Hodge (Trainspotting, Trance, Shallow Grave) has already begun to adapt Welsh‘s Porno.
You can be happy, but just don't too happy because this wasn't supposed to happen so soon. Boyle is planning to make the film in 2016, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Trainspotting. But he is still looking to get the cast back together.
He told The Playlist:
There's always been this long-term plan for Trainspotting 2, if John can produce a decent enough script, I don't think there will be any barriers to Ewan or any of the cast coming back. I think they'll wanna know that the parts are good so they don't feel like they are letting anyone down.
The story 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.
Robert Carlyle and Ewan McGregor are reportedly on for it.
However, 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, however, agrees that the source material for the sequel isn't quite as good as the source material for the original:
Porno is not a great book in the way that Trainspotting, the original novel, is genuinely a masterpiece, I think, as a piece of writing. But we have been doing some work on it, and it's got potential, yeah, for sure. And when the moment's right, I think we will approach it.
Stay tuned.
