"It’s not a great book," said Danny Boyle about Irvine Welsh’s 2002 Trainspotting sequel, Porno, back in 2010. This is the point where most filmmakers would think, “Alright. Bit of a shame but maybe best to leave this one alone and look for other material”, but not the Trainspotting director. Instead, he saw “potential” in the wreckage and decided to work slowly and very long-term on the project to get a script up to scratch. The wait for concrete news has been a lengthy one. 

Finally though, we’ve got somewhere and it looks like the adaptation, Trainspotting 2, is very close to happening. Thankfully, as Boyle told Deadline, the script has been handled by the original screenwriter, John Hodge, and it’s reportedly “terrific”. Not only that but “all the four main actors want to come back and do it. Now it’s only a matter of getting all their schedules together which is complicated by two of them doing American TV series.” 

Trainspotting 2, as it exists in Porno, focusses on the lives of the characters a decade on. Renton is running a nightclub, Begbie is out for the person who was sending him all the gay porn, Spud is considering suicide and Sick Boy is making a gay porn film. 

It might not have been the best novel, but with the original Trainspotting scriptwriter and cast, it can't go that wrong.