’Wall Street’ Sequel Inspired by 2008 Market Crash
Actors Michael Douglas, left, and Shia LaBeouf in ''Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." The film, directed by Oliver Stone, is screening out of the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Photographer: Barry Wetcher/Twentieth Century Fox via Bloomberg
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Linzie Janis reports on the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, where Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" will have its premiere today. (Source: Bloomberg)
Actors Michael Douglas in the movie ''Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." The film, directed by Oliver Stone, is screening out of the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Photographer: Barry Wetcher/Twentieth Century Fox via Bloomberg
Oliver Stone blasted capitalism and the banking world as he presented the sequel to his 1987 blockbuster “Wall Street” at the Cannes Film Festival today, appearing with Michael Douglas and the rest of the cast at a news conference.
“It seems that we got drunk,” Stone said, referring to the boom and bust in global markets, just as his “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” had its world premiere. “I thought the system will correct itself, but it didn’t. It got worse.”
Stone called for an end to the “tremendous inequality” of shareholders and chief executives making money while working people did not.
“I’m confused, as are many people in the world right now, whether capitalism in its present form can work: It seems not,” Stone said. “It seems that it’s excessive and unregulated, and I would love to see serious reform.”
The September 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and U.S. taxpayers’ $700 billion bailout of the financial system are driving directors to make movies critical of the status quo. Michael Moore gave his satirical take on the meltdown last year with “Capitalism: A Love Story.”
Crisis and Cash
In an interview last night, the movie’s producer Edward R. Pressman said it was the 2008 crisis that inspired Stone to do a sequel, something he previously didn’t want to do. The sequel cost $70 million (compared with the original’s $16 million-$17 million budget), he said.
Stone had considered revisiting the story five years ago, “but he withdrew,” said Pressman. “Oliver’s not interested in sequels per se.” What won him over was a new script that wove in the 2008 crash, the producer said.
Stone confirmed that account. Initially, he said, “I didn’t want to celebrate that culture of wealth.” After the crash, though, “all bets were off, because really it was a major heart attack. It was a triple bypass.” And for Stone, it was “time to come back.”
The sequel contains shots of trading rooms and of the wood-paneled boardroom of the New York Federal Reserve, where bankers beg for a bailout. Stone said when he searched for locations, “the big banks were very arrogant, and said no: They wouldn’t let us in.” Only the Royal Bank of Canada “gave us the floor to shoot on.”
In the original Wall Street,” the cutthroat corporate raider Gekko spurred a young aspirational broker to break the law in pursuit of profit. “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” he preached. “Greed is right. Greed works.”
Gekko’s Book
The sequel shows a much older Gekko emerge from prison with no assets beside the gold watch and clunky cellphone he went in with, and no one to meet and greet him, not even his daughter (his only surviving child). Desperate to win back the approval of Wall Street bigwigs, he goes on a tour to promote his new book, “Is Greed Good?”
Winnie is dating proprietary trader Jake Moore, whose collapsing institution has just been refused a government bailout. Gekko and Jake realize they have a common love -- Winnie -- and a common enemy: the powerful banker Bretton James Josh Brolin), whose firm, Churchill Schwartz, has hefty backers in the U.S. administration. Jake goes to work for Churchill Schwartz after his own company’s demise.
At the news conference, Douglas -- dressed in a light- gray suit that matched the color of his hair -- said he and Stone were stunned by the hero worship that Gekko inspired.
“We just never anticipated that all these MBAs, these people in business school would just be ranting and raving that this was the person that they wanted to be,” he said. “People are attracted to villains.”
The movie is not in the competition for any Cannes awards.
To contact the writers on the story: Farah Nayeri in Cannes farahn@bloomberg.net; Linzie Janis in Cannes at ljanis@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Beech at mbeech@bloomberg.net.
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