Famed director Danny Boyle has released the first extended peek at the sequel to his iconic 1990s drama Trainspotting, which catches up with the four main characters from the first film, who are now decades removed from their original heroin-laden exploits.
Called T2 Trainspotting, Boyle’s follow-up is based on Porno, the literary sequel to the original Trainspotting book — Boyle adapted the classic film from a novel written by Irvine Welsh.
The literary version of Porno is set a decade after the plot of Trainspotting, but Boyle’s film adaptation will take place approximately two decades after the original 1996 film, largely because the four original actors from Trainspotting returned to reprise their original roles in the sequel.
The trailer largely follows the same style as the 1996 film, with narration from Ewan McGregor, dark drug-infused shots, and characters who appear to be struggling with various dire psychological and physical circumstances.
“Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,” says McGregor’s character in a modern adaptation of the classic “Choose Life” rant from the original film, “And hope that someone, somewhere cares.”
Time will tell whether the stylized drama can capture as many hearts in the internet era. But given the original’s longtime cult status, where it often occupies shelf space alongside films like Fight Club, Donnie Darko, Edward Scissorhands, and Requiem for a Dream, there will probably be a decent turnout at the box office, if only for nostalgia’s sake.
With Boyle again directing McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Johnny Lee Miller, and Ewen Bremner — all reprising their original roles in the new film — and a soundtrack that appears to stick to iconic alt-classics from Trainspotting (Underworld’s Born Slippy plays during the two minute preview), it looks like all the ingredients that pleased fans the first time around are in place .
T2 Trainspotting hits theaters on January 27, 2017.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?