#movie:t2-trainspotting

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Ewen Bremner's Big Year: Scottish Actor Talks 'T2: Trainspotting' and 'Wonder Woman'

Ewen Bremner in ‘T2: Trainspotting’ (Sony)

It’s not like Ewen Bremner has been wasting the days away. The 45-year-old Scotsman, best known to U.S. audiences for the playing the scraggy heroine junkie Spud in Trainspotting, has been working consistently since Danny Boyle’s 1996 cult classic, with credits that include Snatch, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, Match Point, and Snowpiercer.

But 2017 is turning out to be a banner year for Bremner. In March, he reprised the role of the down-and-out Spud in the long-awaited sequel T2: Trainspotting. And this month he appears in the record-breaking superhero sensation Wonder Woman as Charlie, the kilt-rocking marksman who joins Diana Prince’s merry band of WWI operatives.

“It’s been a busy time, quite fantastic, actually,” Bremner told Yahoo Movies during an interview to commemorate the Digital HD and Blu-ray release of T2. “I feel very happy to have these opportunities. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”

Still, Bremner takes measured reflection of the moment he’s having. T2 is a sequel Boyle, Bremner, and castmates Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, and Jonny Lee Miller discussed for two decades before it finally became a reality. As for Wonder Woman, Bremner wasn’t sure he’d landed the role until “the last minute.” And getting those green lights isn’t even half the battle.

“You never know as an actor what’s going to work and what’s not going to work,” he said. “You don’t know if it’s going to be any good. You can never really tell when you’re working on a film. There are so many factors that impact on the quality of the finished piece. You’re in control of only a fraction of the stuff that goes into making a film.”

T2 earned mostly positive reviews from critics, but Bremner is especially impressed with how much the sequel has resonated with fans. “People have been super-passionate about it,” he said. “We had some really nice critical acclaim, but audiences and the public have been super-passionate about it, more than the reviewers. Certainly in the circles I run where I live in Edinburgh, people stop me all the time and want to talk about it.”

The film finds a clean yet unhappy Renton (McGregor) returning to Edinburgh two decades after he took off with the loot stolen by him and fellow addicts Begbie (Carlyle) and Simon, a.k.a. Sick Boy (Miller). With Rention only leaving a portion of the haul to gentle-souled Spud, both Simon and Begbie have their own plans for vengeance. And Simon’s girlfriend Veronica (Anjela Nedyalkova) complicates matters when she comes between them.

As Boyle told us upon T2‘s release, the movie takes a hard look at how men age — and it ain’t so graceful. “I think the film really does have something to say that’s quite profound about the human experience and the nature of aging and the battle with time and the idea of trying to outrun your own shadow and to leave behind your past,” Bremner said. “And to be the person that you want to be, and not be dragged down by your history.”

Spud, in particular, is being dragged down as the film opens. He’s still badly struggling with addiction, his family has left him, and he attempts suicide moments before Renton appears at his doorstep. “It felt important for me to honor that character,” Bremner said of returning to the role. “I didn’t want him just to be a gentle joke, which is kind of a danger with a character like that. People expect some sort of humor and gentility. But over the course of 20 years of adulthood I know as well as anyone that you pick up all kinds of scars along the way. You take on all kinds of baggage. So it was important to me that Spud, as a result of his addiction and his struggles with fatherhood, that he had some real fight.”

Bremner had done a fair amount of work in films before he landed the role of Spud, with projects like Mike Leigh’s art-house hit Naked (1993) and the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Judge Dredd (1995). But Trainspotting, Bremner said, has “been the gift that kept on giving.” He explained: “It was a film that every filmmaker saw, whether they were in Timbuktu or whether they were in Hollywood… That made it very much easier for me to be considered to work with other great filmmakers.”

Gal Gadot and Ewen Bremner in ‘Wonder Woman’ (WB)

Those filmmakers have included Ridley Scott, Joon-Ho Bong, Werner Herzog, Guy Ritchie, Woody Allen, and now Patty Jenkins, who became the first female director to gross more than $100 million domestically on the opening weekend of Wonder Woman.

Bremner recently completed work on Will, a TNT series about the lost years of Shakespeare. “I’ve got a really fantastic and different part. I’m playing the evilest man in England,” he said.

Which means his epic year could get even better. “I feel like I’ve really been on a great ride lately,” he said before adding with a laugh: “Long may it last, as far as I’m concerned.”

T2: Trainspotting hits Digital HD on Tuesday and DVD and Blu-ray June 27.

Watch the T2 cast talk about reuniting:

Read more on Yahoo Movies:

The Story Behind the Black-and-White Photo That Linked ‘Batman v Superman’ and ‘Wonder Woman’

Director’s Reel: Danny Boyle Talks ‘Trainspotting,’ ’28 Days Later,’ ‘Slumdog’ and More

Role Recall: Ewan McGregor Looks Back at ‘Trainspotting,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Moulin Rouge!’ and More

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The Biggest Box-Office Winners and Losers of 2017 (So Far)

Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman (Image: Warner Bros)

Right now, Wonder Woman is single-handedly holding up the summer box office — but even the mighty Amazon’s powers have limits. After a strong start to 2017, thanks to the success of films both big (Beauty and the Beast, Fifty Shades Darker) and small (Get Out, Split), this summer has been fairly stagnant for Hollywood. The key exception, of course, is Wonder Woman, which has been kicking butt, setting records, and single-handedly restoring audiences’ faith in the DC Extended Universe. There’s still time for a turnaround, though, if films like Spider-Man: Homecoming and War for the Planet of the Apes — both of which have received excellent early reviews — make up for an underwhelming May and June. Here are the winners and losers at the 2017 box office so far.

WINNER: Wonder Woman This superhero’s first feature film was a long time coming, and audiences greeted it with open arms (bullet-deflecting bracelets optional). The Patty Jenkins-helmed film opened at $103 million and had a stronger second week than any of its DC superhero predecessors, quickly becoming the top-grossing live-action movie by a female director.

LOSER: Universal’s Dark Universe The return of the Universal monsters is a tough sell to begin with, but the critical and commercial failure of The Mummy ($71 mil) has insiders wondering if the expensive new franchise is dead on arrival.

The poster for Get Out (Image: Universal)

WINNER: Get Out Director Jordan Peele’s February debut remains the box-office triumph of the year: a fiercely entertaining horror hit, and a searing commentary on racism, that toppled expectations to gross $175 mil on a budget of just $4.5 mil.

LOSER: T2: Trainspotting It’s hard to believe this one went so wrong. Although it reunited director Danny Boyle and the original 1996 Trainspotting cast, the film sequel arrived almost unnoticed at the U.S. box office, making just $2.4 mil.

WINNER: Disney’s Franchise Machine No one does a big-budget sequel or a lavish remake like Disney, and audiences are devouring these repeat viewings as fast as the Mouse can make them. The live-action Beauty and the Beast is the No. 1 film of the year, making $503 mil domestically and over $1.2 billion worldwide. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 holds the year’s No. 2 position with $380 mil, Cars 3 had made a solid $111 mil, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales — though less successful than most previous Pirates films — is holding its own with $163 mil (and a boisterous $520 mil foreign box office).

Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron in Baywatch (Image: Paramount)

LOSER: Baywatch Just when we were starting to think Dwayne Johnson was infallible, his summer comedy Baywatch belly-flopped in the shallow end. Audiences were baffled by the TV remake, which has grossed only $56 mil (and unlike some of the summer’s other underachievers, isn’t making up for it overseas).

WINNER: M. Night Shyamalan 2017 opened with a surprise twist: Shyamalan, who hasn’t had a No. 1 movie since 2004’s The Village, topped the box office three weekends in a row. His micro-budget thriller Split raked in $138 mil, making it the director’s most profitable film next to Signs and The Sixth Sense — and, with its end-credits reveal, setting him up for a serious comeback.

Artwork for Alien: Covenant (Image: Fox)

LOSER: Alien: Covenant It wasn’t exactly a flop, but Fox’s latest Alien installment was expected to do far better than $73 mil at the box office — seeing as its predecessor Prometheus made $126 mil. As of now, it’s the lowest-performing film in the franchise since 1992’s Alien 3.

WINNER: DC Comics Characters Finally, those Warner Bros. superheroes are coming out of their depressive funk and giving Marvel a run for its money. Both Wonder Woman and the light-hearted Lego Batman Movie ($175 mil) rank among the year’s top 10 films. While neither has surpassed Guardians of the Galaxy 2, both proved that the world of Batman and Superman can be more profitable — and more fun — than naysayers imagined.

LOSER: Vin Diesel Yes, Fate of the Furious was a hit, and everyone still loves Groot. But the failure of xXx: The Return of the Xander Cage ($44 mil) bodes poorly for his solo-action career — not to mention all that talk of putting Dwayne Johnson front and center in future Furious films.

Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades Darker (Image: Universal)

WINNER: Sex and Violence Redux Say what you will, but Fifty Shades Darker ($114 mil) and John Wick: Chapter Two ($92 mil) gave audiences exactly what they wanted. Though Fifty Shades had higher receipts, John Wick was the bigger success, doubling the domestic box office of the first film (while Fifty Shades came in $50 mil under its predecessor).

LOSER: Katherine Heigl The thriller Unforgettable was the actress’s first studio film in five years — and while Heigl received some praise for her performance as a villainous ex-wife, the film topped out at $11 mil, falling short of a comeback for the Knocked Up leading lady.

WINNER: Grown-Up Superheroes Fox took a gamble by making its most valuable superhero, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, the star of a gritty, R-rated action flick. Logan paid off, outgrossing nearly every previous X-Men film and spinoff to the tune of $226 mil.

LOSER: Mainstream Comedies Nobody ever said comedy was easy, but this year’s live-action studio comedies have really struggled to generate laughs or money. Fox’s Snatched ($45 mil), Warners’ Fist Fight ($32 mil) and CHiPs ($18 mil), Paramount’s Baywatch ($56 mil), and Sony’s Rough Night ($16 mil) all came in below expectations.

Charlize Theron in The Fate of the Furious (Photo: Universal Pictures)

WINNER: The Fate of the Furious It should be running on fumes, but the eighth Fast and Furious film proves that the franchise still has momentum. Though Fate came in significantly under Furious 7, the last of the films to star the late Paul Walker, it made $225 mil domestically and a jaw-dropping $1 billion in foreign box office alone.

LOSER: High-Budget Horror In a popularity contest, micro-budget horror hits are tough to beat but large-scale scare flicks are a different story. The beautiful but bloated A Cure for Wellness ($8 mil) couldn’t draw the same audience that showed up for smaller creepfests like Get Out and Split.

Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Image: Marvel)

WINNER: Blond Actors Named Chris Everyone jokes about how Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Evans are easily confused, but when it comes to box-office receipts, 2017 is a good year to be any of them. Pine had the biggest movie of his career with Wonder Woman; Pratt outdid his breakout film with its sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; and Evans ditched the Captain America costume to score an indie hit with Fox Searchlight’s Gifted ($24 mil). As for Hemsworth, he’s out of the picture until November — but things are looking good for his Thor: Ragnarok, which became Marvel’s most-watched trailer of all time.

WINNER: Quirky Kid Far Conventional wisdom is that kids will watch the same thing over and over, but this year’s receipts suggest that they, or at least, their parents, are itching for something more original. The fourth films in the Smurfs and Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchises (The Lost Village and The Long Haul) tanked, while animated comedy The Boss Baby (loosely based on a picture book) was one of the year’s success stories with $173 mil.

LOSER: Unwanted Epics It’s not the year for big, historic battle movies (unless they involve superheroes). The Promise, a $90 mil drama set during the Armenian Genocide, made just $8 mil. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, a violent $175 mil retelling of the medieval epic, made $38 mil. The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon as a European soldier fighting monsters in ancient China, made just $45 mil in the U.S. (though it did considerably better in — you guessed it — China).

Poster for Kong: Skull Island (Image: Warner Bros)

WINNER: Giant Monsters Was anyone clamoring for a new King Kong movie? Perhaps not, but Kong: Skull Island attracted a sizeable audience ($168 mil domestically; $566 mil worldwide), boding well for the future of Warners’ mega-monster films (to be continued with 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters). Godzilla’s kin also made in-roads at the specialty box office with the Anne Hathaway comedy Colossal, which had a strong opening weekend in April (though it ultimately didn’t recoup its $15 mil budget).

WINNER: Latino Films Though the big studios are slow to catch on, the Hispanic-American audience has been a major force at the box office for years now. In 2017, a Latino audience drove the success of independent bilingual comedies How to Be a Latin Lover ($32 mil) and Everybody Loves Somebody ($1.9 mil), as well as the micro-budget drama Lowriders ($6 mil).

LOSER: Bad Buzz Victims Many film fans first heard about the sci-fi film Ghost in the Shell ($40 mil) because of its casting controversy: Scarlett Johansson, rather than an Asian actress, was given the lead role in the Japanese manga adaptation. The feel-good drama A Dog’s Purpose ($64 mil) suffered from bad press for a very different reason, a video leaked to TMZ of a dog allegedly being abused on set (later determined to have been misleading). Neither film was able to bounce back at the box office.

Zoey Deutch and Halston in Before I Fall (Image: Sundance Institute)

WINNER: Low-Budget YA Dramas They can’t all be The Fault in Our Stars, but teen dramas adapted from novels are still a solid, low-cost investment. Open Road Films’ high-concept high-school movie Before I Fall took in $12 mil this winter, while Warners’ romantic weepie Everything, Everything made $33 mil in the spring.

LOSER: Paramount It’s been a tough year so far for the studio: all six their films (Monster Trucks, xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Rings, Ghost in the Shell, Baywatch, and Transformers: The Last Knight) underperformed. The opening of the fifth Transformers movie is a particularly harsh blow, since it’s the lowest in the franchise at $69 mil.

WINNER: Blockbusters Gone Global As studio movies keep getting bigger, the foreign market — particularly China — is increasingly important in making them profitable, and determining where studios spend their money. A majority of 2017’s biggest movies made a lot more money overseas than in the U.S., and some notable domestic flops were international hits. The Great Wall, for example, made $45 mil in the U.S. but $286 mil internationally; Resident Evil: The Final Chapter made $26 mil in the U.S., $285 mil abroad.

Read more from Yahoo Movies:

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Wonder Woman

Spider-Man: Homecoming: 5 Amazing Things We Just Learned About Next Marvel Movie

Blade Runner 2049 Featurette Unites Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford…and Frank Sinatra

[kevinpolowy]

Ewan McGregor Is Not So Sure About Choosing Life in New Clip from 'T2: Trainspotting' (Exclusive)

“Choose life” became a motto for the 1996 film Trainspotting after its fast-living (and fast-running) lead character Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) championed the phrase while sprinting through the streets in Edinburgh in the movie’s iconic opening sequence.

Renton returns in the sequel T2: Trainspotting, and 20 years later he’s neither high on drugs nor life, having taken off to Amsterdam with the loot he pilfered from his mates at the end of the first chapter.

In the exclusive clip above, Renton is back in Scotland explaining his medical woes to old friend Simon, formerly known as “Sick Boy” (Johnny Lee Miller). He had a metal plate inserted into his chest after a bout with acute coronary insufficiency.

“Should last another 30 years, they said. But they didn’t say what to do with those 30 years,” he rants. “Two or three, fine, I’ll take that. I can cope with that. I can think of enough things to do to piss away what remains. But 30, what am I supposed to do with that? I’m 46 and I’m f–ked.”

And just wait until Begbie (Robert Carlyle) learns he’s back in town.

T2: Trainspotting opens Friday. Watch our “Director’s Reel” interview with Danny Boyle:

Read More:

’28 Days Later’ Director Danny Boyle Explains the Surprising Inspirations for His Speedy Zombies

All About That ‘Gay Moment’ in ‘Beauty and the Beast’: We Answer Your Burning Questions

Yoda Voice Actor Frank Oz Gives Cagey Response When Asked About ‘Star Wars’ Return

[kevinpolowy]

Director's Reel: Danny Boyle Talks 'Trainspotting,' '28 Days Later,' 'Slumdog Millionaire,' and More

Many qualities bind the eclectic films of Danny Boyle: highly stylized aesthetics, great soundtracks, the introduction of future stars (Ewan McGregor, Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Dev Patel), and, perhaps above all, constant pulses of energy. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that the 60-year-old Englishman is unabashedly exuberant when discussing his career highlights, as on display in our new Director’s Reel interview (watch above).

Boyle had a heap of U.K. theater productions and TV movies to his credit when he attained international acclaim with the 1994 black comedy-thriller Shallow Grave. While the Hitchcockian murder tale (which Boyle admitted was “stolen from the Coen brothers'” breakout Blood Simple) put him on the map, it was the 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting — about a group of heroin addicts living the high life in Edinburgh — that truly established the director’s style. “Most people thought we were insane to do it,” he said. “Because it was a drug movie, or it appeared to be… But we had a very different vision… The film had an exuberance that surprised people.”

After 20 years of speculation, Boyle and the boys are back with T2: Trainspotting. The sequel finds a recovered Mark Renton (McGregor), who took off with most of the crew’s robbery loot at the end of the first film, returning to Scotland to make amends with Spud (Ewen Bremner) and Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller), while recent prison breakout Begbie (Robert Carlyle) seeks vengeance. “It’s not a reflective experience — it’s a compulsive, immersive experience like the first film,” Boyle said.

In between Trainspotting rides, Boyle took Leonardo DiCaprio to Thailand (The Beach, which the director harbors regrets for “invading” the country to film), reinvented how zombie movies were filmed (28 Days Later, the first widely released film shot digitally), watched the “seriously underrated” James Franco saw off his arm (127 Hours), and won a directing Oscar for a film that was also named Best Picture (Slumdog Millionaire). “They had to drag me away at the end, I was addicted to it,” Boyle said of shooting in India.

Watch Boyle talk about the making of all these films in our Director’s Reel interview above.

T2: Trainspotting opens Friday. Watch the trailer:

Read more:

Role Recall: Ewan McGregor Looks Back at ‘Trainspotting,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Moulin Rouge!,’ and More

’28 Days Later’ Director Danny Boyle Explains the Surprising Inspirations for His Speedy Zombies

Why Disney Is Risking $300 Million on ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Monsters Ahead! What to Make of the ‘Kong: Skull Island’ Post-Credits Scene

[kevinpolowy]

Watch the 'Trainspotting' Cast Talk About Reuniting at 'Secret Meeting' to Plot Sequel 'T2' (Exclusive)

A Trainspotting sequel had been rumored for years, but according to cast members, it wasn’t until they reunited at a secret meeting in London in 2015 that it felt like the project was truly going to happen.

“There, for the first time, we were all back together again, in 20 years,” says Ewan McGregor in an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip from the upcoming T2: Trainspotting. (Watch above.)

In addition to McGregor (who played Renton), the meeting included Johnny Lee Miller (Sick Boy), Ewen Bremner (Spud), Robert Carlyle (Begbie), and director Danny Boyle. “Just looking at each other — staring it each — it was very emotional,” says Carlyle. It was there the four main players were all given the new script to read.

Related: Watch Ewan McGregor Talk ‘Trainspotting,’ ‘Star Wars’ and More in Role Recall

Set 20 years after the 1996 cult favorite about heroin addicts scraping by in gritty Edinburgh, T2 sees Renton return to Scotland to make amends with old mates Sick Boy and Spud while attempting to avoid the unhinged Begbie, who’s just been released from prison. The film also sees the return of costars Kelly Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, James Cosmo, and Irvine Welsh, the writer of the novels both Trainspotting and T2 are based on.

T2 opens in the U.S. on March 17. Watch the trailer: