Trainspotting 2 release date set for January 2017

Award-winning director Danny Boyle's long awaited sequel to Trainspotting will be released in January next year, it has been confirmed.

Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle are all set to reprise the roles they first played two decades ago.

An online trailer with footage from the original movie sets a release date of 27 January 2017.

Trainspotting is based on Irvine Welsh's tale of Edinburgh drug addicts.

The trailer comes as filming of T2 is getting under way, with Bremner spotted in character as Daniel "Spud" Murphy during pre-production in Edinburgh last week.

Carlyle, who will return to the part of "psycho" Begbie, has said that the script for the new film is "absolutely fantastic" and stronger than the first film.

'Amazing script'

The actor joined Welsh at The Usher Hall in Edinburgh earlier this year to mark 20 years since the release of the original movie, where he said that filming will take place "pretty much 50-50" between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

He said: "I'm basing this on nothing other than the fact that the production office is on Bathgate. There's a clue there.

"What I will say is that all the characters are exactly where you would want them to be.

"The strength of this new script is the fact that the narrative is a bit stronger than it was in the original."

He added: "You learn a lot about Renton, Sick Boy and indeed Begbie and where their heads are.

"I think it's an absolutely fantastic script. John Hodge has done a wonderful job, as he did with the original."

McGregor has said he does not have any nerves about returning to the part of Renton.

Speaking to the Press Association ahead of the release of his new movie Our Kind Of Traitor, he said: "It's such an amazing script, penned by John Hodge who wrote the original Trainspotting script, so there's a real excitement about it.

"Like every movie you do, you have things to think about leading up to them. There is a nervousness about it, but I'm not nervous because it's a sequel to Trainspotting."