Out on the festival rounds for his Steve Jobs biopic, Danny Boyle has been fielding questions about the long-mooted Trainspotting sequel. Tantalisingly, it's closer to happening than it's ever been. The script, by original screenwriter John Hodge, is "terrific", and, Boyle tells Deadline at Telluride, "All the four main actors want to come back* and do it."
Trainspotting 2 already exists, of course, in the form of Irvine Welsh's 2002 novel Porno, which picks up the principals a decade on. Renton is running a nightclub in Amsterdam; Begbie is just out of jail and on the warpath towards whoever was anonymously sending him all the gay porn; Sick Boy is mining a new vein of "adult" entertainment; and Spud is contemplating both suicide and a history of Leith.
It's a different beast to Trainspotting, not least because it seems to be a sequel to the film rather than the novel. "It's not a great book," conceded Boyle way back in 2010, "in the way that Trainspotting is genuinely a masterpiece. But we've been doing some work on it, and it's got potential, for sure. When the moment's right, I think we will approach it."
Now that moment appears to be arriving. Hodge's screenplay - still based on Porno - is complete, and Boyle says he intends it to be his next film. "Now it's only a matter of getting all [the actors'] schedules together," says the director, "which is complicated by two of them doing American TV series.” Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy) remains busy with Elementary, and Robert Carlyle (Begbie) is a regular on Once Upon A Time.
While you're waiting for Trainspotting 2 to pull into the station, Steve Jobs is out in the UK on November 13. It plays at the BFI London Film Festival on October 18.
*No Kelly Macdonald then?