‘How the F— Would You Get This Movie Made in America?’ Christine Vachon, Film4, BBC Film Put ‘Trainspotting,’ ‘Ratcatcher’ and ‘The Wicker Man’ Through the 2026 Greenlight Test

Would “Trainspotting” get financed today? Could Lynne Ramsay survive the jump from shorts to a first feature? And might “The Wicker Man,” once treated as a problem child, now look like exactly the kind of genre package buyers chase?

That was the conceit of a lively session hosted by Wendy Mitchell, with Picturehouse’s creative director Clare Binns, Killer Films’ Christine Vachon, Film4’s head of distribution and sales Stefanie Fahrion, BBC Film’s commissioning executive Alice Ojha and Casarotto’s Simon Renshaw asked to assess British classics as if they had just landed on their desks in 2026.

Nobody suggested the market had become kinder, but several films looked less risky than their loglines might suggest.

The Talking Factor

First up was “Trainspotting”: heroin use, a dead baby, filthy toilets, heavy Scottish dialect and no obvious box-office cast.