It’s been a massive twenty years since Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Franco Begbie last got together on the big screen, but with the arrival of T2 – the sequel to Trainspotting (not an ill-fated remake of the Terminator sequel) – they’re about to get back into the Scottish underbelly once again. With the original cast back on the books and Danny Boyle presiding over the director’s chair, all the pieces are in place for another successful surface from the mire.
However, as you’d expect with a twenty year gap, the actors don’t really look all that much like the iconic characters they played all those years ago. It begs the question, have they waited too long? We’re inclined to say probably, but when it comes to the work of Danny Boyle and Irvine Welsh you can never write them off, so we’ll have to wait and see. For now, you can check out the teaser trailer below if you missed it on the big screen, and the DVD will be out in June to give you another chance to see the sequel.
Release date
Cinema:
T2 had a UK release date of Friday the 27th January 2017, which gave it a fairly clear run at the box office with only schmultzy canine adventure, A Dog’s Purpose, Boston marathon bombing drama, Patriots Day, and rom-com drama, Rules Don’t Apply, planned for the same weekend in the UK. There’s no word as of yet in terms of a US release date, so American fans of the original may well have to wait for the home entertainment release to come around to catch it.
DVD, Blu-ray and digital download:
The DVD release date in the UK has been confirmed for the 5th June 2017 with the Blu-ray out on the same date, along with the digital download rental on iTunes, Xbox Store, and Amazon a week or so later. The digital download purchase will be a week earlier on the 29th May.
Story
The plot is a direct sequel to the Trainspotting film and it’ll be based on the Irving Welsh followup novel, Porno, which saw the gang getting into the sleazier side of the movie industry. When Sick Boy decides to make a porn film and manages to persuade Renton, who has gone on to kick his heroine habit, they manage to secure the assistance of 25-year old film studies student, Nikki, to take a starring role, but as ever the path to riches isn’t an easy one, especially with Begbie on the loose.
T2 Trainspotting teaser trailer:
Cast
Ewan McGregor (Beauty And The Beast (2017)) will be back in the role of Mark “Rent Boy” Renton and he’ll be joined by Robert Carlyle as Francis “Franco” Begbie. Ewan Bremner (Wonder Woman) and Johnny Lee Miller complete the cast recall as Daniel “Spud” Murphy and Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson.
Age rating
The Trainspotting sequel has been awarded an age rating of 18 in the UK by the British Board of Film Classification, so you should expect it to be at least similar in terms of strong language, sex scenes and drugs as its iconic predecessor.
Production
Danny Boyle directs T2 from a script by John Hodge, so it’s as much a long-awaited continuation of Trainspotting as it can be. It’s been produced by Bernard Bellew, Danny Boyle, Christian Colson and Andrew Macdonald for Film 4, Decibel Films, Cloud Eight Films and Figment Films, with distribution through Sony Entertainment.
First impressions
It’s hard not to be a little concerned that T2 doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of living up to the delivery of the original film. Though all of the pieces are back in the same places, they’ve got very different faces and a new set of constraints. The teaser trailer does little to take away the doubt, so we’ll sit tight on the narrow slat of the fence until the DVD hits the shelves. Time and lucrative tides have taken the edge off and we’ll be surprised if it can be put back on. You can see more on the film with Ewan McGregor’s Twitter page.
On a slight aside, it’s also a little annoying that the film has been given the name T2, which in movie terms is synonymous with the line, “have you seen this boy?” A Trainspotting sequel based on the Irving Welsh book, Porno, should surely have been called that too if everyone’d had the shiny spoons to make it happen. Calling it T2 will always water its impact down a little and result in too much entanglement with Terminator 2, which just isn’t right.
