Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh is creating a stage musical version of his hit book and movie for London's West end.
Edinburgh born Irvine says he is working with songwriting partner Steve McGuinness and producer Phil McIntyre on the musical.
The movie, released in 1993, was adapted for the stage at the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow starring Ewen Bremner as Renton just nine months after publication.
Harry Gibson’s theatre production was launched again in 2017 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and now Irvine plans to go bigger.
He said: "I don’t want to jinx something that’s in development, but my songwriting partner Steve and I have done 14 brand new songs for a Trainspotting musical.
"We do a kind of techno act together, but we’ve stepped up to write urban house, blues, jazz, disco and rock ‘n’ roll songs and power ballads.
"We’ve got the songs and we’ve got a script for it. We’re looking at things like casting, choreographers and set designers.
"We’re looking at doing it about a year from now at the earliest, but I think we’ll probably try to go straight into the West End. That’s the ambition for it.”
Irvine also said his novel The Blade Artist is being adapted by Edinburgh author Jenni Fagan into a TV series, with Robert Carlyle as Begbie.
He added: "We’ve had masses of people expressing an interest in it. We want to take the heat off it for a bit now and just get working on developing the scripts.
"Jenni is such a brilliant writer and will do a fabulous job. I didn’t want do to it myself because it’s too recent a book for me. I want to be excited by it again.
"I think Jenni will give it something else and another twist that will make it more interesting."|
