Filmmaker Danny Boyle just kicked off what’s sure to be months of interviews, appearances, and Q&As as part of the Oscar campaign for his new film Steve Jobs—which just premiered at Telluride—but he’s already got his eye on what he wants to do for his follow-up. Boyle’s brilliant 1996 film Trainspotting rightfully launched him into the public eye, and he’s been curious about adapting author Irvine Welsh’s follow-up book Porno for some time now. Word on a Trainspotting sequel has been heating up over the last couple years, and now Boyle tells Deadline that he’s planning for the follow-up to be his next film:
“All the four main actors want to come back and do it. Now it is only a matter of getting all their schedules together, which is complicated by two of them doing American TV series.”
That original quartet includes Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, and Kevin McKidd, but as Boyle says, Miller and McKidd are unavailable for a good chunk of the year due to work on CBS’ Elementary and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, respectively. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t work something out, and if Boyle plans to make this his next film, it’s possible they could begin production during next year’s network TV hiatus, which normally lasts from March to July/August.
Screenwriter John Hodge, who wrote Trainspotting, has written a script for what they’re calling Trainspotting 2 (though it’s still based on Porno) that Boyle says is “terrific”. The story for Porno finds the characters crossing paths once again, this time against the backdrop of the pornography business.
The prospect of a follow-up was rocky for a while due to a falling out between McGregor and Boyle, but as of last year it looked like the two had reconciled. Trainspotting is one of my favorite films so while it’s incredibly difficult to capture that kind of lightning in a bottle a second time around, it’s tough not to be excited by the prospect of the entire principal creative returning for a second go-around.
