EWAN McGREGOR BACK AS RENTON IN “T2 TRAINSPOTTING”

Press release

Scottish actor Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rogue, The Island) returns to his breakthrough role of Mark Renton in Columbia Pictures' T2: Trainspotting, the eagerly anticipated sequel to the 1996 milestone film, Trainspotting.

Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

The sequel will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4 and Trinoma) starting March 1, 2017.

Joining McGregor are his original castmates, Ewan Bremner as Spud, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy, and Robert Carlyle as Begbie.

In the original film, the four life-long friends/associates/bitter enemies had travelled to London to sell a bag of fortuitously obtained heroin. While the rest are sleeping, Mark Renton sneaks out with the entire proceeds: £16,000 in cash. He walks away. He will not look back.

Now, twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him: Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie.

Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance.

For its many fans, the first film provided an adrenalin jolt to a British movie scene dominated at the time by period dramas, social realism and romantic comedies. With its trippy visuals, propulsive soundtrack and cast of unforgettable anti-heroes—and supported by an innovative, in-your-face marketing campaign—Trainspottingcaught the spirit of the times perfectly.

McGregor remembers the first time he saw a cut of the film: “I went to see it in a small Soho screening room with my wife and my uncle. I remember just coming out and being completely blown away after. We were looking at each other, not really able to talk about what we’d seen. Brian Tufano’s cinematography, all the performances, Danny’s direction, the music … it was just like all of the elements were as good as they could be really. And so the chances were it wasn’t going to suck. And it didn’t”.

The actor used the back story from Irvine Welsh’s follow-up book Porno as a template for Renton, “although plot wise we‘ve deviated hugely,” he says. “He’s certainly less successful than the Renton is in Porno, and the fact he has just had heart-surgery is key. This has been a life changing experience for him. I’m lucky enough not to have had one but I can imagine you re-evaluate your life after that: what you’ve done and what you want to do with the rest of what’s left.

“In Trainspotting, Renton was the observer,” McGregor continues. “He’d describe what everyone’s been up to - and say it’s all shit eventually. The hard stuff in this one was to play the fact that he’s so broken when he comes back, he’s really in a state. His marriage is falling apart and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do with the rest of his life. And that’s why he’s back, because these are the only people that really know him or that he knows. I suppose it’s a mid-life crisis of sorts, all of which plays slightly against the quiet smart gun Renton we knew from the original.”

T2: Trainspotting is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

"TRAINSPOTTING” SEQUEL “T2 TRAINSPOTTING REUNITES ORIGINAL DIRECTOR, CAST

Press release

Columbia Pictures' T2 Trainspotting reunites Academy Award®-winning director Danny Boyle with the original cast of the 1996 Trainspotting film – Ewan McGregor as Renton, Ewan Bremner as Spud, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy, and Robert Carlyle as Begbie.

The sequel will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4 and Trinoma) starting March 1, 2017.

First there was an opportunity……then there was a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him: Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie.

Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance.

“It’s 21 years since the release of the first film, and conventional wisdom says that’s 20 years too late to do a sequel!” says director Danny Boyle. “The delay wasn’t exactly deliberate — we’ve been talking about doing another one for years. But, actually, it’s what gives the film a raison d’etre. When you put the actors side by side with how they looked 20 years ago, it’s very brutal. We looked at it ten years ago and the actors didn’t look that different. I used to joke with them that they must moisturise all the time! But 20 years is a long time and you can feel it. The guys dealt really well with how they look now and how that they were going to be compared to how they looked previously. It was honest. They weren’t shy about owning up to where they are now, and that’s what the movie is all about.”

Jonny Lee Miller, who plays Simon (aka Sick Boy), agrees that this is not a traditional sequel: “I always said there was no point in making a sequel to Trainspotting unless you’re examining some bigger issues. What’s it like being older? What have you done? What’s happened to the characters and what are the implications? A straightforward sequel to a caper, with the answers to who got away and who got revenge, becomes very boring really. The only way you could make it interesting is to put people’s lives in between it.”

“The main question was ‘could John Hodge produce a script?’” says Danny Boyle. “The 20th anniversary was coming up and we thought it’s now or never. John went away and wrote a script that I knew, as soon as I read it, I could send to the actors. I thought ‘they’d be crazy not to do it’. They still might have said ‘no’ because of all sorts of factors, not least because a couple of them are in serious full-time TV shows. But they all responded very positively, so we were able to get it going.”

“We always sort of knew that there would be a pleasure in seeing these four characters together again” continues Boyle, “but the big surprise is the emotional impact. You see their faces, and it’s immediate. There’s a pathos. It’s to do with our awareness of what time has done to them, and to us. The film kind of telescopes time—you look one way and the past is there, so close; you look again—and it’s gone. It’s interesting, T2 is really an adaptation of two books: Porno, Irvine Welsh’s 10 years later sequel but, even more, it’s a direct loop back to Trainspotting. For me, the original book is like a modern Ulysses. It’s unsurpassed I think, and reading it is still like the ‘rush of ocean to the heart’. The new film is constantly drawn back into its orbit and it’s been a privilege to step back into that world”.

T2: Trainspotting is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.