Danny Boyle talks Trainspotting 2 and how it will deviate from novel sequel Porno

Danny Boyle: We’re working on the sequel now, yeah, and certainly one of the things we like to do in our work is kind of lift out of the realism into the kind of surreal. We like to present something that isn’t utterly realistic, but feels appropriate to a character, or feels very appropriate to the storytelling. You kind of make super-realism, a hyper-realism and then you can lift off that into the surreal. That way it feels comfortable, it doesn’t just feel like a weird bit of filmmaking. So like the toilet scene in Trainspotting and the vision that Simon [James McAvoy] has in Trance of Frank’s half-head as a warning to him that something’s gone badly wrong, things really aren’t as they seem and there is terrible violence and danger and damage imminent. So that’s one of the devices that we use in the types of films that we make. So if we do make a sequel to it, you hope that there will be some elements of that within that.

IGN: Are you and John Hodge mostly interested in reuniting these characters or are you primarily going to be drawing from the book, Porno?

Boyle: Although we will have Irvine Welsh involved, hopefully, it’s going to be more about the same actors playing the same characters twenty-years later. And I think that’s very rich because their original characters were hedonists, and pleasure seekers, who were prepared to take enormous risks as you do in your 20s. And you get away with it then. But obviously you get into your 40s and the body starts to creek and it’s not quite so easy. So that will also throw up lots of things for them in terms of that sense of, ‘What have you done with your life? What happened in that 20 years? Are you still in the same town? Do you still have the same obsessions? Do you still have the same relationships with those people that you grew up with and that you shared that life with?’ And also for the audience watching it, they’ve also aged, so those who saw the original will have those same questions to ask themselves about their own lives. So it’ll be interesting. It’s a good reason to do a sequel, rather than just cash in on something that’s popular.

IGN: To me it sounds like it’s more of its own thing, rather than based on Porno.

Boyle: Yes, I think it will be. Yeah.