Three of the 50 films on the list were produced or distributed by Channel 4's own Film4 Productions – Trainspotting (#25), Secrets & Lies (#49) and Sexy Beast (#5).
Since 2001's production of Ben Elton's Popcorn the studio has hosted numerous productions including Cabaret, Trainspotting, A Clockwork Orange and their critically acclaimed take on Frank McGuinness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me.
The station, the railway sheds and the town's popular trainspotting locations feature significantly in the autobiographical book, Platform Souls by local author Nicholas Whittaker.
In 1997, the band recorded music for the play Trainspotting, based on the Irvine Welsh novel of the same name, performed at the BITEF theatre and directed by Đorđe Marjanović.
From 1990-98 he was Head of Film at Channel 4, during which time he commissioned over 100 feature films including Trainspotting, The Madness of King George, Secrets & Lies, Shallow Grave, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Brassed Off, and films by Ken Loach, Peter Greenaway, Tony Harrison and many others.
Established in 1996, Empire Design’s early work included poster campaigns for movies such as Toy Story, Trainspotting and 12 Monkeys.
Notable productions by independent theaters at EXIT Theatre included the world premiere of Babylon Heights by Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame) and Dean Cavanagh, a new authorized translation of No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, the premiere of One Big Lie by Liz Duffy Adams, and an incendiary Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks.
Entertainment Weekly gave the film "B" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Gridlock'd doesn't have the imaginative vision of a movie like Trainspotting, yet it's more literally true to the haphazard torpor of the junkie life than anything we've seen on screen since Drugstore Cowboy... Curtis Hall has caught the bottom-feeder enervation of heroin addiction".
In film, the heroin chic trend in fashion coincided with a string of movies in the mid‑1990s—such as The Basketball Diaries, Trainspotting, Kids, Permanent Midnight, and Pulp Fiction—that examined heroin use and drug culture.
In the 1980s the derelict station was a haven for drug addicts, this being alluded to in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.
While the film was an intentional homage to the aforementioned films, Glaser states in an interview that the stylistic reference to Ritchie films and to Trainspotting were also to fool audience members into thinking they'd seen this sort of movie before, only to flip it on its head by Pennys darker conclusion.
The inspiration for this film came from Craig Ferguson's desire to make a cheerful film celebrating Scottishness, as opposed to the epic nature of films like Braveheart and Rob Roy, or the downbeat quality of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave.
Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter wrote "Director Allan Moyle has described Weirdsville as a Canadian Trainspotting, which is a bit of wishful thinking", saying "it lacks the inventiveness and biting edge of Danny Boyle's landmark movie" and while the film "has some quirky pleasures, it seems unlikely to achieve either major cult status or boxoffice success."