The Film by Two Women That Has Wall Street Talking

Hollywood hasn't released a notable female-led film set on Wall Street for 27 years. Not since Mike Nichols's 1988 comedy Working Girl—starring Melanie Griffith as a plucky wannabe banker with "a mind for business and a bod for sin"—has a major film focused on a woman navigating the combative, competitive, and outright cutthroat offices at the center of the business world.

Now, two ambitious filmmakers aim to give the genre a much-needed update, and they’re soliciting feedback—and funding—from some of Wall Street’s biggest names. Equity, a movie about a female investment banker whose IPO is in jeopardy, is the product of interviews and meetings with dozens of former and current dealmakers, including James B. Lee Jr., a vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Barbara Byrne, a vice chairman of Barclays, muni bond maestro Alexandra Lebenthal, and Elaine La Roche, a former Morgan Stanley managing director who reigned as one of the most powerful women in finance in the 1990s.