The big buzz out of Hollywood is that Danny Boyle has managed to gather the original cast of Trainspotting for another go at the big screen. The sequel has landed at Tri-Star (owned by Sony), and Boyle will be in the director’s chair, naturally.
Returning to the project is the original principal cast, which includes Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremmer and Robert Carlyle. To take a step further, the original writer John Hodge has returned to pen the script for Trainspotting 2. Whether he’ll be the sole writer is yet to be determined.
Tom Rothman, Sony Pictures co-chair, has a longstanding relationsghip with Boyle since the mid-to-late 90s. Rothman has been a supporter of Boyle’s since the film A Life Less Ordinary, when Rothman was an executive for Fox at the time. The relationship continued when Rothman had founded the Searchlight division at Fox, releasing Boyle’s 28 Days Later to Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours.
The original Trainspotting film was adapted from the 1993 novel by Irvine Welsh, which told the story of a group of lower income heroin users in Edinburgh. McGregor’s character was the lead and narrator of the film, supported by Miller’s Sick Boy, a drug dealer, Carlyle’s Begbie, a violent sociopath and Bremner’s Spud, a dim but genial friend.
Boyle went onto to state: “It’s been 20 years since we met these characters and John Hodge’s screenplay brilliantly explored what’s ahppened to them - and to us – in the intervening years. We are grateful to Tom and Hannah for their support and we can’t wait to get going.” Producing the new film will be Andrew Macdonald, Boyle, Christian Colson and Bernie Bellew through Figment Films, Decibel Films and Cloud Eight Films.