More than twenty years after Danny Boyle’s 1996 dark comedy Trainspotting, fans finally got a peek at the long-awaited sequel. The first teaser for next year’s Trainspotting 2 was released today and has a February 3, 2017, release date in the United States.
The clip shows all of the original gang watching trains go by to the tune of Trainspotting‘s unofficial theme song, Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”. Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller), Renton (Ewan McGregor), Spud (Ewan Bremner), and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) are back.
Officially called T2: Trainspotting 2, a title oddly reminiscent to T2: Judgment Day, the film is directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge, with the story based on the novel Porno and its characters created by Irvine Welsh.
The gang is back!
The first teaser of the sequel to the 1996 film Trainspotting was finally released, only revealing that the gang is indeed back. Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle have not let down fans. Director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge returned as well. T2: Trainspotting 2 is expected to hit theaters on January 27, 2017.
The original film was based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh and the sequel will be based on his follow-up, Porno. The plot follows a group of heroin addicts in the late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life.
Trainspotting was nominated for three British Academy Film Awards in 1996, including John Hodge for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film, and Best British Film. Hodge won in his category. Hodge also won Best Screenplay at the Evening Standard British Film Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, losing to Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade.
The film won the Golden Space Needle (Best Film) at the 1996 Seattle International Film Festival. Ewan McGregor was named Best Actor by the London Film Critics Circle, BAFTA Scotland Awards, and Empire magazine.
Trainspotting was met with both commercial and critical success, becoming a cult classic thanks to the film’s huge impact on popular culture. The British Film Institute (BFI) ranked Trainspotting in 10th place of the Top 100 British films of all time. In 2004, the film was voted the best Scottish film of all time in a general public poll.
Better late than never
In January 2009, Danny Boyle declared his wish to make a sequel which would take place nine years after the first film, based on Irvine Welsh’s own sequel novel, Porno. However, Boyle was reportedly waiting for the actors to get old enough to portray the same characters.
In December 2015, following years of wait and speculation, Sony’s TriStar Pictures acquired worldwide rights to the film, and the return of the original lead cast was confirmed. The film will be set twenty years after the events of Trainspotting.
In March 2016, principal photography on the film surprisingly began in Edinburgh, Scotland, according to director Danny Boyle. Filming was previously scheduled to take place in May 2016.
T2: Trainspotting 2 is expected to hit theaters in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2017, followed by the United States on February 3, 2017, and finally a worldwide release on February 10, 2017.
Source: CBS News