Film version of Irvine Welsh's Filth in the works

By Sean O'Neal | August 4, 2011 | 9:08pm

Aux Features Film

Adaptations of Irvine Welsh novels have ranged from Trainspotting to, well, things that are not Trainspotting (namely, The Acid House), but there’s an outsized depravity to most of his writing that makes it seem like it’d make for a good movie, one that vaguely misanthropic teenagers especially would enjoy. Filth certainly is right up there—concerning a bigoted, perverted cocaine addict who also happens to be a cop, whose investigation of a murder is frequently derailed by vulgar pranks and even more vulgar coercions of sex from the women he arrests—and according to Welsh, it’s next on the list for adaptation.

During a conversation with The Playlist about the upcoming film version of his novella collection Ecstasy, Welsh said that James McAvoy (as the cop in question), Jamie Bell (as his sort-of-partner Lennox), and Alan Cumming (as his supervisor, Toal) are now all attached to a Filth movie, which is due to begin shooting in January 2012. Welsh also says that British director Jon S. Baird has already completed a revision of the screenplay that Welsh describes as “magic.” Which is an unlikely word to describe a story that is narrated, in part, by a talking tapeworm, but okay.