In the fall of 2008, a few weeks after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Washington Mutual collapsed — and the tenor of the U.S. financial crisis turned from panicky to nearly apocalyptic — Fox gave the go-ahead for "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."
Hooray for capitalism! There's always room for shareholders to profit from even the most dismal economic news. Two years later, with the country still shackled by high unemployment and out-of-control debt, "Wall Street 2" bullied its way into theaters Friday (September 24). The Oliver Stone-directed film arrives nearly 23 years after the Oscar-winning original. The first film also opened in the shadow of financial uncertainty, just a few months after the stock-market crash known as Black Monday. Now, as then, the timing is right for a story about greed.
Michael Douglas returns as Wall Street mover-and-shaker Gordon Gekko, fresh off a jail sentence and determined, at least initially, to expose his industry's borderline criminal excesses. Gekko is set, as well, on repairing his relationship with his daughter (Carey Mulligan), a quest that brings him into an alliance with a young trader named Jacob (Shia LaBeouf). Throughout the film, we get both MBA-level corporate discourse and you-abandoned-me familial hurt feelings.
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Returning to the "Street"
Fox had been developing a "Wall Street" sequel since 2007, when the economy first began its downward spiral. A green light only came in October of '08, amid those bankruptcies and bank failures. Allan Loeb ("21") was tapped to pen the script, and Douglas was reportedly interested in reprising his iconic role.
But in February, Stone told MTV News he had dropped out of the project. "I didn't want to do another 'Wall Street' movie. I think everything I had to say came through," he told us. "I'm just not interested because it's so complex now. I don't think people can understand security derivatives."
By April, however, Stone had changed his mind. He was said to be blown away by Loeb's script and jumped at the chance to helm the sequel. It probably didn't hurt, as well, that Douglas appeared likely to return and that LaBeouf was in negotiations to join up. Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Susan Sarandon and Frank Langella eventually signed on as well.
Getting Down to Business
Shooting kicked off in fall 2009, and we got our first look at Douglas and LaBeouf on set in October: the elder statesman rocking a casual-Friday look, the young buck in some designer duds. Charlie Sheen, who starred in the original, agreed to appear in a cameo for the new flick. "He came in. It was fun for a day. It was good to see him again," Douglas told us later.
The trailer dropped in January, giving us a grizzled, post-jail Gekko, copious shots of the go-go-go Wall Street and the supposition that greed, once good, has become legal. The movie debuted in May at the Cannes Film Festival.
Letting the Bulls Loose
As the release date approached, we got an opportunity to chat with the cast in New York and at the Toronto International Film Festival.
What convinced Stone to return for the sequel, he told us, was the chance to create "a completely new Gekko" and to dramatize an economic crisis he called "a heart attack, a real triple bypass to capitalism."
LaBeouf, meanwhile, was pulled in by the opportunity to work with Stone, whom he dubbed "the most dangerous filmmaker alive" in the 1980s and '90s. Plus, the actor views Gekko as even more compelling than key characters in two of his other starring franchises: Optimus Prime of "Transformers" and Indiana Jones.
"He's got more bite, he's more dangerous, he's the most dangerous of the three," LaBeouf said. "Also the most interesting, I think. There's something in how tangible and visceral it is. Whereas the other films are fantasy films where the suspension of disbelief is necessary for you to get into the movie. This isn't that. It's a very tangible world, and you're living in the midst of the twilight of American economic dominance."
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