Wall Street 2

Wall-Street-2-Gekko.jpgOne of the greatest and most quotable lines from any movie in the 80’s was the immortal one spoken by Gordon Gekko (portrayed brilliantly by Michael Douglas) in one of the greatest 80’s movies “Wall Street” where he says “Greed is good. Greed works”.

The line is not one that I’d want to teach my kids in the future, but it is one that pretty much captured the economic temperature of the 1980’s.

Word has been going around for a long time now that they’ve been looking at doing a sequel to Wall Street focusing on the Gekko character, and it seems like the project is now in full motion. The folks over at MovieWeb give us this:

20th Century Fox is moving forward with a sequel to 1987’s Wall Street, with Allan Loeb (21) set to pen the screenplay. The project is being fast-tracked by the studio as a Michael Douglas starring vehicle, however the actor is not officially attached. According to Variety, the modern-day story will again center on Gordon Gekko, who has recently been sprung from prison and re-emerges into a much more tumultuous financial world than the one he once lorded over. The Bud Fox character, played by Charlie Sheen in the original, will not appear in the latest incarnation.

Now, I’m sure there will be a number of people out there who will say “Wall Street doesn’t need a sequel”. And yes, they’re right… it doesn’t NEED a sequel. But I submit that the strongest aspect of Wall Steet wasn’t the story, but rather the characters, and sometimes when you have really rich characters independent of the story, it pays to go back and visit those characters again. This is one of those situations in my opinion and I’d be very excited about seeing a Wall Street 2 especially with it revolving around Michael Douglas.

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20 thoughts on “Wall Street 2

  1. Dude this movie looks like it will rock. Too bad Charlie Sheen is not onboard. I actually saw Oliver Stone and a couple of producers having body sushi on top of a freakin perfect 10 girl at Cheetah’s gentlemens club over on West 43rd St. about 2 weeks back. Oliver tipped her like $500 cause she was showin off to the other girls. They were with one of the owners there named Sammy who takes care of all the celebs there from what the bartender told me.

  2. SHIA LEBOUF WUOLD BE THE WORST PICK FOR THIS MOVIE
    CHARLIE SHEEN WAS PERFECT (cool, calm, suave)
    Despite was SHIA has done lately, he still is the disney chanel kid he has always been, he is soft

  3. Wall Street 2 could be a must see movie. Gekko perhaps reincarnated after doing some time; gets back into the hedge fund game, corrupting a ratings agency, destroying an inncoent bank wityh rumours he starts through corrupting a newspaper man and then finding his operation caught up in the whirlpool of devastation he has created … which he then leaves pocketing half a billion dollars, taken from the company’s pension fund.

    And its all legally done!

    The killer line is something being said in an interview like “Don’t you feel any guilt about anything you have done?”
    “No. Why should I?”
    “What about all the innocent people you have hurt?”
    “If god had not wanted people to be shorn, he would not have created sheep.”

    Fades to black – Gekko’s leering smile and uncaring laughter.

  4. There’s a reason why Oliver Stone isn’t involved with this sequel. First of all, he created the character of Gordon Gekko because he penned the original script with Stanley Weiser. And I agree that the characters are rich. However, just having interesting characters is not enough for a screenplay. There was a wonderful collision of characters and ideas that occurred with the original Wall Street. It’s an archetypal movie with good reason to be. We don’t need to see anymore of Gekko’s life. Our imaginations have been inspired by his character and the events that played out. A sequel will squelch all that. Oliver Stone was inspired to write and direct the original. The only true inspiration for a sequel is greed.

  5. They’re making a movie on the Wolf of Wall Street with Leo DiCaprio in the lead and Scorcese directing which covers a lot of the same practices as Bolier Room. The book is a great read.

    Re Wall Street 2, there can be no way it will come out soon because any plotting / script / historical detailing will be completely redundant. Things are happening so fast that I’d guess it will be shelved for a couple of years till things calm down and they can either make it about 2008 OR can at least write something that won’t be completely off the mark by the time the picture hits the movie theatres,

  6. Wallstreet 2 could have many ways to go…they could start the movie with Bud Fox (charlie sheen) comming out of jail after serving his sentence for insider trading. Perhaps with the urge to get back into the game but cannot takes on young protege to teach him the rope, the ins and outs of the stock market. but in wallstreet 2 mayb bud fox will take on the role of the villain becuz gordan gecco wouldnt fly considering michael douglas is do old and hasnt done a movie in ages!!! however i am quite interested in seeing how this movie will play out.

    1. I agree that there are many ways to go. They can talk about AIG taking naked put options which is against proper procesure becasue they werent covered for the upside in the market. They can talk about how wallstreet created the bull market and how they crashed it in one year with hedge funds and not allocating risk properly then recieveing millions of dollars in bailouts. They should talk about the huge transfere of wealth of the poor and middle class to the even richer and the NEW WORLD ORDER THAT IS COMMING. The IMF will soon have complete control over the SEC and Federal Reserve. If you dont belive me, Obama and Geitner have been saying it for a while and Sarcoze from France is pushing for it. Its inevitable the direction our Financial System is going toward. Just Imagine a world regulator of the financial system. Complete control over countires monetary systems. Maybe they should talk about this in the WALL STREET 2.

  7. Joe beat me to it.
    Hats off to Joe.

    I normally wouldn’t be interested in a Wall Street 2 (but, as mentioned, Boiler Room 2 might not sound so bad) but when I thought about the recent scandals and the bailout, and all that, it took me three seconds, and then I said, Hell Yes.

  8. If you like Boiler Room (which I did as well) read a book called “The Wolf Of Wall Street” by Jordan Belfort – the author’s story is the inspiration for Boiler Room and it is a great book.

  9. I agree that the characters are what made Wall Street great. It can be boiled down to the Hitchcock quote, “the greater the evil, the greater the film.”

    Wall Street was good because Gekko was bad. The main worry I have is that America has seen too many Extreme Home Makeovers and is redemption happy. I don’t want him to be good. Do you think that becoming “good” would hurt the “evil” character in the original?

  10. I love that scene as well (although you are paraphrasing what Gekko actually said so probably shouldn’t put it in quotations).

    Incidentally, the greed speech is inspred by something said by Ivan Boesky, an arbitrageur from the 80s who ended up being done in for insider trading (Gordon Gekko is partly based on him).

    Boesky gave a commencement speech where he said: “Greed is all right, by the way… I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

    Another amusing bit of trivia – Gecko probably wouldn’t have gone to jail given he could afford a decent lawyer. See this site for an analysis of the legal situation: http://crookedtimber.org/2003/07/21/wall-street/

    I think it is perfect timing for a sequel, given that the recent excesses and turbulence in the financial sector mirror so much of what went on during the 80s. Let’s hope they get it right though.

  11. I think there is potential in a Wall Street sequel, but I have a bad feeling about the direction they’re taking this. First of all, Gorden Gekko wasn’t supposed to be the main character, the Charlie Sheen character was. Gekko was only the villain in the original. Furthermore, there is no way in hell that Gekko spent 20 years in jail after the original movie, the film had a cynical ending which hinted that the pawn in Gekkos game would fall a lot harder than the mastermind.

    Without Oliver Stone writing, I don’t have a lot of hope for this, and I hope Michael Douglas has the dignity to back off if this script isn’t worthy of the original.

  12. This is bad if Oliver Stone isn’t on board and if Gekko is still a massive SHARK in the year 2009-10. Wallstreet worked because it was a Ronnie RAY-Gun era film. What’s he going to do in this movie? Is it about him being the head of AIG and getting a bailout from the Government… then going on a nearly $500,000.00 spa trip right afterwards.

    The only way I would go and see this is if it was about Gekko having failed and is now managing a Home Depot in “Smallville” Kansas. That would be an interesting film.

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