The subject has gone back and forth over the years: will Danny Boyle be able to reunite his Trainspotting cast to eventually film a sequel? Of late the answer has been (reportedly) yes, with even long-standing holdout Ewan McGregor warming up to the idea. Or not, depending on who you talk to.
A good person to talk to is McGregor himself, who, while promoting Angels and Demons, talked to MovieFone about the possibility of working with Boyle to make Porno. Asked about whether he’d be interested in the project, the answer was blunt:
I don’t think I would, for several reasons. The first one is that I didn’t think the book was very good. The novel of Trainspotting was quite fantastic, it was beautiful, quite moving and disturbing writing, and then I find that the sequel … the book that Irvine Welsh wrote was called Porno, and … it didn’t move me as much … He’d written a good sequel to the film as opposed to a sequel to his book. It’s also a similar story, you know, the betrayal of trust…And I thought I don’t want to make the same story again. And, also, 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…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.
All of which is exactly the same thing McGregor has said for several years with respect to the project. He also says (again) that he hasn’t spoken to Boyle in years, which makes the prospect seem even less likely. Which, really, is good.