No ‘Trainspotting 2’ for Ewan McGregor

Fans can now see actor Ewan McGregor in “Angels & Demons,” which opened in US theaters yesterday. Unfortunately, those who still had any hope of seeing him in a sequel to the highly successful – and equally controversial – 1996 junkie-themed “Trainspotting,” might as well forget about it, since the actor makes it very clear that he’s not even remotely considering being a part of such a project.

In a brand new interview with MovieHole, McGregor tackles such topics as a sequel to the famous “Trainspotting,” as well as to the musical “Moulin Rouge,” which, although failing to impress movie critics, did score remarkably well with the public. It’s not so much that he’s not the type to get involved in sequels, the actor explains, as it is that, at this point in time, follow-ups to these two projects would simply make no sense.

“I don’t think I would, for several reasons.” McGregor says of the much-rumored sequel. “The first one is that I didn’t think the book was very good. The novel of ‘Trainspotting’ was quite fantastic, it was beautiful, quite moving and disturbing writing, and then I find that the sequel… […] it didn’t move me as much … […] And I thought I don’t want to make the same story again. And, also, I think just the idea of getting the cast together again 10 to 15 years later isn’t good enough, you need more than that. I wouldn’t want to damage ‘Trainspotting’’s reputation, because it was an amazing film and a very important film of its time, a very important film for me and … a very important film for British cinema. I wouldn’t want to leave people remembering a poor sequel rather than leaving its reputation where it sits at the moment, which is kind of a phenomenal film.” the actor further explains.

As for the possibility of doing a sequel to “Moulin Rouge” (which has also generated plenty of media attention since release), that isn’t going to happen either – as neither is a crossover into the music industry. The idea is that, as Ewan puts it, he’s pretty good at what he does and trying to make a name for himself in music would be, at this point, rather pointless, as well as possibly unsuccessful.

“No… I think it’s quite tricky for actors to release albums. It’s difficult, because I’m an actor, you know, I’m not a musician. I love singing, but I don’t have a big repertoire of songs that I’ve written; I mean, I’ve got a few, but nothing that I could fill an album with, and I don’t want to do it just for the sake of it. I don’t know, we’ll see. I certainly would be very happy to do another musical; I loved it. It would just have to be the right thing.” McGregor concludes by saying.

For the full promotional interview, please see here.