Boyle is never one to repeat past successes, and he actively challenges himself when it comes to making movies. Seeking something totally different to what he had done before, he was inspired by the thought of telling this confined, claustrophobic survival story.

It ticks all the boxes: fresh genre for Boyle (the survival drama, true story); it eschews standard storytelling tropes; it has a neat, compelling concept; there's a challenge.

The challenge being: how do you make a gripping movie with one immobile guy in the lead. Boyle describes 127 Hours as "an action movie with a guy who can't move".

"It's like that's the challenge, because you can't rely on location, the cut, the incidental characters, the villain: there's just you."

For Boyle, it offered the opportunity to revisit the digital cameras developed for Slumdog, for an immediate, terse, cramped shooting style. Early script reviews have 127 Hours pegged as largely dialogue-free, though it's likely that we'll have to wait until the curtains are up before we find out what Boyle has done with the boulder-weighted scenes (we expect him to have given his lead actor a good degree of improvisational freedom with his confined setting).

The trailer gives nothing away save for some frenetic, adventuring build-up to the life-changing moment. Secrecy on Boyle's part, or a studio ruse to kid the potential audience that this won't be a 'one man, one room' job? Who knows, but let's not forget that Slumdog Millionaire was marketed as 'the feel-good film of the decade'.