T2 Trainspotting director Danny Boyle talks about sequels and his beef with Ewan McGregor

Tron: Legacy, Zoolander 2, Blues Brothers 2000, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull …Cinema is littered with long-awaited sequels that failed to conjure the same magic as their beloved predecessors. So it’s no wonder director Danny Boyle was nervous about following up his 1996 cult classic Trainspotting.

“Everybody was the same,” he explains. “Everybody had that moment of thinking, ‘Is this a good idea? We could get absolutely killed here! We could be literally roadkill! Cinematic roadkill!’”

The British-born Boyle – whose films include Slumdog Millionaire, sci-fi Sunshine , horror 28 Days Later and recent biopic Steve Jobs – is full of stories about concerned parties during the making of T2 Trainspotting. From bystanders during the shoot to the returning cast (“when we showed them the film, they had that moment of relief that it wasn’t terrible!”), the worry was palpable. Even a focus group that saw a test screening in advance “came out and went, ‘Thank God it’s good!’”

If anything, it’s a testament to the sense of ownership felt by the generation that grew up on Boyle’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel about junkies in Leith, Edinburgh. Arriving in Britain alongside Brit-pop, rave culture and even the advent of New Labour after years of Tory rule, the interweaving stories of heroin addict friends Renton, Sick Boy and Spud and the psychotic non-druggie Begbie became as much of a cultural phenomenon as, say, A Clockwork Orange to those growing up in the early 1970s.

Boyle’s had plenty of success since – winning a best director Oscar for Slumdog, orchestrating the opening Olympics ceremony for London 2012 – but nothing like Trainspotting. A real one-off, it’s laced with power, he says.