Danny Boyle says ‘Trainspotting’ sequel ‘Porno’ coming in 2016

Just because English filmmaker Danny Boyle has an Oscar on his mantelpiece (a Best Director award for 2010’s “Slumdog Millionaire), that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten his roots as one of Brit cinema’s most boundary-pushing directors.

Before films like “Slumdog” and “28 Days Later,” Boyle was best known for the darkly comic drug caper “Trainspotting.” Based on author Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name, the 1996 film chronicling the lives of a rag-tag gang of Scottish heroin addicts put Boyle -- as well as stars Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, and Kelly Macdonald -- on the Hollywood map. Now, almost 20 years after the film first hit theatres, Boyle sounds like he’s ready to return to the scuzzy side of the U.K. for “Porno,” the long talked about adaptation of Welsh’s sequel to “Trainspotting.”

The Playlist caught up with Boyle at Texas multimedia fest SXSW over the weekend, and the director dished on a few of his upcoming projects, including his plans for “Porno.” Boyle says that his longtime screenwriting collaborator John Hodge (who worked with the director on “Shallow Grave, “Trainspotting,” “The Beach,” and the upcoming “Trance”) is hard at work on the screenplay, and that they hope to shoot the film in 2016 with the cast of the original.

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"There's always been this long term plan for ‘Trainspotting 2,’” Boyle said. “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."

McGregor’s return has always been a bit of a question mark due to his very public falling out with Boyle in 2000. After many successful team ups, Boyle cast the “Star Wars” prequel actor in his thriller “The Beach,” but canned McGregor at the eleventh hour in favour of Hollywood hot commodity Leonardo DiCaprio. As recently as 2011, McGregor said that he and Boyle were not on good terms, but if “Porno” is on track, apparently the two have buried the hatchet since then.

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But Boyle's row with McGregor may not have been the only thing holding up the film. The age and appearance of the original cast also seems to be a bit of a problem for the director. “Porno” picks up with the surviving “Trainspotting” characters nine years after the original, and sees Rents, Spud, Sick Boy and company trade in drugs for the adult entertainment business. Boyle has said in the past that the hard-living, now middle-aged "Trainspotting" characters absolutely need to look like it in a sequel.

"They don't really look it, those actors, yet. They're a bit moisturized up and looked after. So when they get a bit older, we'll have a go at sassing it up a bit, yeah," Boyle told IGN in 2007.

Who'd have thought? Not being real-life drug addicts has actually cost McGregor and company work!

Boyle has a few more projects in the pipe before "Porno" can get going, including the psychological thriller "Trance" and two period films. Provided Hodge's script is solid and the actors have aged sufficiently for the director's liking, Boyle's "Trainspotting" sequel seems to be very much a reality at this point.