A TRAINSPOTTING Sequel Series Is in Development with Robert Carlyle Reprising His Role
Director Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting is getting a sequel series, and it will be based on Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting novel sequel, The Blade Artist. One of the best things about this news is that Robert Carlyle is set to reprise his role as Francis Begbie. It’ll be great to see him play this character again, who is reformed.
Carlyle is also an executive producer on the project, and it will consist of six episodes. The story is set in LA and Edinburgh 20 years after the events of Trainspotting. Begbie is now known as Jim Francis, “a reformed character who believes he has found the perfect life. But a return to Scotland for the funeral of a murdered son he hardly knows confronts him with a past he can barely recall and he soon discovers you can take the boy out of Edinburgh, but you can’t take Edinburgh out of the boy.”
Carlyle said in a statement that the “prospect of working with Irvine and bringing Francis Begbie to life once more is an absolute gift.”
Welsh added, “Begbie is Begbie and Robert is the long-term friend and collaborator who inspirationally brought the character to life with his incendiary portrayal. To say I’m excited at us reuniting creatively on this project is obviously something of an understatement.”
Carlyle and Welsh are exec producing alongside Buccaneer Media CEO duo Tony Wood and Richard Tulk-Hart. The project isn’t attached to a network or streamer yet, but it will be and I’ll be looking forward to it.
Here's the synopsis for the novel The Blade Artist:
Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he's a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values.
When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband's violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.
Boyle did helm a sequel to Trainspotting that was released in 2017. That sequel was based on the 2002 follow-up novel Porno. Are you excited about this new sequel series?
Source: Deadline