Ewan McGregor Says No to 'Trainspotting' Sequel

Last year, I asked Danny Boyle about the long-rumored Trainspotting sequel. Irvine Welsh had written the follow-up, Porno, a few years earlier, and with Boyle getting all the Slumdog attention, it seemed as though the sequel might be closer and more feasible than ever. "There's only really one way to do it - we'd have to share everything between everybody," he told me. "You just say, 'Listen, that's the deal. Everybody's in,' because we've all benefited beyond belief from the success of it." But one of the cast members says you can count him out. In a new interview with Moviefone, Ewan McGregror says, "I don't think I would [appear in a sequel], for several reasons." "I didn't think the book was very good," he continues. "The novel of Trainspotting was quite fantastic, it was beautiful, quite moving and disturbing writing, and then I find that the sequel...it didn't move me as much. He'd written a good sequel to the film as opposed to a sequel to his book." There's more to it than that, however, says the star of The Island, Stay, and a handful of other forgettable movies:

"I think just the idea of getting the cast together again 10 to 15 years later isn't good enough, you need more than that. I wouldn't want to damage Trainspotting's reputation, because it was an amazing film and a very important film of its time, a very important film for me and...a very important film for British cinema. I wouldn't want to leave people remembering a poor sequel rather than leaving its reputation where it sits at the moment, which is kind of a phenomenal film."

He's certainly right about that. I expect that talk of this will heat up and cool down in cycles over the next couple of years until it no longer makes any sense to do it, which is unfortunate on one hand, but again, McGregor does raise a few good points.

Comments

[Dan]

I'm happy there isn't going to be a "Trainspotting" sequel, because "Trainspotting" was a piece of sh*t.