Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

[MacGuffin]

Shia LaBeouf Stands With His Mentor Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas
Source: MTV

It's still sort of amazing to me that a "Wall Street" sequel is happening. Not just happening, but being helmed by the original's director, Oliver Stone. It just seems... off.

No matter though. It's happening. And Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas's iconic shark, is back. In "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps," he's teaming with Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) to warn the finance industry of the coming economic crisis... and solve a murder mystery! Sounds awesome.

[Reinhold]

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/tfr/1416513996.html

open casting call for extras in NYC

[Gold Trumpet]

Alright, I'm going to predict the problems I think this movie will run into.

Moderate spoilers

I'm excited about the film, but I already think it will disappoint. The problem the original didn't have is that it was about a problem that was forseeing real problems on Wall Street. Inside trading became a standard identity of the crash in 1987 and the motto of a new Wall Street. The original isn't revelatory art, but it had the gage set at the right barometer of what was coming Wall Street's way. This foresight made the film authentic to a lot of potential critics. When Hollywood comments on reality, it usually is a simplistic version of the truth that comes after the said events. Wall Street is relatively simplistic, but the important thing is that its events came after the movie.

The plot of Wall Street 2 is set two years prior today where Gordon Gekko is a traveling spokesperson for his own books. He's outside of Wall Street, but he's predicting an oncoming crash. There were people who did that. They made bold predictions that turned out to be accurate, but the point is, they already made those predictions. Not only did they already make them, but I've read a million articles on what the nature of their predictions meant. Too many people are already so called experts on why Wall Street tanked recently. Stone is doing himself a million favors by ditching the hedge fund angle and focusing on the banks, but I think this film will already disappoint too many important people because it won't be clued in to the nuance of their opinion. They will likely have more to say about why Wall Street crashed than Oliver Stone will have to say in the vehicle of the Gekko yarn.

People build up the original Wall Street, but it's not great art. It's not even a great thriller. The new Wall Street should be better than the original, but I still think its motivation will lean toward entertainment over art. If Stone can make the new Wall Street click at a pace that I find to be both exciting and insightful, I'll be happy, but with the way some people talk about the original you'd think that a lot more is going to be coming out of this new film. There won't be.

Could I be wrong? Absolutely. I'm expecting my opinion to be in the middle and I easily could be swayed one way or another. In fact, given that I have only read circumstantial information, I should be wrong about this hunch.  

[MacGuffin]

'Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps' Star Carey Mulligan Is 'A Gekko, Man'
Source: MTV

Soon, very soon now, fans will get to see exactly what an Oliver Stone sequel looks like. The original hit theaters in 1987, earning Michael Douglas a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as shark Gordon Gekko. In the original, the morally bankrupt Gekko coaches young newcomer Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) as he enters the fast-paced world of stock trading.

Gekko finds some redemption in the coming sequel, "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps," when he links up with another young trader -- Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) -- on the eve of a catastrophic financial crisis. It's not so unusual, to turn a one-time villain into a redemptive figure (see also: "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"). He'll even have a daughter in this outing, Winnie Gekko, played by Carey Mulligan.

MTV's Josh Horowitz recently had the opportunity to speak with Mulligan, and she was more than happy to talk about the coming sequel as well as her familiarity with Stone's early work. "I had seen ['Wall Street'] years and years ago when I was 11," she said. "Then I watched it again when [Oliver Stone] offered it to me. I love it. It's not my kind of movie in general but the performances are amazing. It's so exciting."

Mulligan was quick to point out that she's playing against type in many ways, which adds to the allure of the role for her. "It's the most contemporary thing I've done," she explained. "It's about something. It's really political."

Sadly, Mulligan wasn't willing to get too specific about her character and whether she's anything like her father. She did drop a few hints however. "She's a Gekko, man. I can't reveal too much but its ridiculous to have that name. It does afford me a million opportunities to play things different ways because I have that father to base so much of my character on."

Just because she's a Gekko, that doesn't mean Winnie necessarily follows in her father's footsteps. "She's not on Wall Street," Mulligan said, her most revealing statement about the character.

She may not be willing to share any revealing details, but Mulligan is definitely excited about the story as a whole and the people she gets to work with. "It's a ridiculously cool cast. Charlie Sheen is going to do a cameo which is going to be amazing!"

[MacGuffin]

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Douglas Shares First Details Of Charlie Sheen's 'Wall Street 2' Cameo
Source: MTV

We've known for a while that Gordon Gekko would briefly reunite with his protégé-turned-whistleblower Bud Fox in "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps." On the red carpet at the National Review Board gala on Tuesday night, Gekko himself, Michael Douglas, revealed some details about the circumstances surrounding that on-screen reunion with Charlie Sheen's Fox, possibly contradicting or adding to the already-known appearance "as a guest on a financial talk show in the background of a scene," as reported by The Playlist. Douglas also spoke to what it was like working with director Oliver Stone again, as the two famously clashed on the set of the original film.

"Charlie did a cameo," the actor told our own Josh Horowitz. "He came in. It was fun for a day. It was good to see him again."

Principle photography on the sequel, it should be noted, wrapped weeks before the December holidays, when Sheen was arrested on domestic violence allegations. With a Colorado hearing set for later this month to determine if charges will be filed, one can be certain a Gekko/Fox get-together wouldn't have been in the offing in 2010.

So what plot point brought the two men together in the film? "Just catching up," Douglas said. "Seeing what he's up to, what he's doing, in passing."

Seems like the hostility between the former colleagues has largely petered away after two decades. Why? Douglas revealed that, after the corruption-tinged events of the original flick, Gekko didn't end up spending much time behind bars.

"He only put me away for a year," the actor said of Sheen's character. "It was just inside trading. I wasn't that angry at him."

Nor is Douglas still angry at Stone. Relations between the men were no different on the sequel than they were during the production of "Wall Street," but Douglas holds no ill will toward the director.

"Nah, same," he said when asked about their relationship this time around. "Contentious. He's a prickly kind of guy. I think he both uses it to motivate himself and his cast."

[Reinhold]

i saw them shooting this a few weeks ago... i think it was michael douglas's apartment scenes that they were doing in soho.

[modage]

Yeah they were filming this by my job, townhouses between 6th Ave and Varick, I didn't see anyone though.

[Gold Trumpet]

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-01-22-2010preview22_CV_N.htm


20 years later, greed's still good for Douglas in 'Wall Street' sequel
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY


NEW YORK — Gordon Gekko, that cutthroat swashbuckler of a corporate raider who once sneered "Lunch is for wimps," is holding sway over a table at a jammed Manhattan restaurant.

No, it's not an '80s flashback but a scene being shot for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a sequel to the 1987 original due this spring that takes place more than 20 years later.

Instead of the ambition-served-raw atmosphere of the 21 Club depicted in the first film, the locale is Shun Lee, an Upper West Side institution where decorative demon-eyed monkeys dangle above the bar like mute witnesses. And rather than coercing a would-be high-stakes player into doing his shady bidding, Gekko is focused on reconnecting with Winnie, his estranged daughter whom he hardly knows after serving a hefty 14-year jail sentence for insider trading.

Just as he's about to seal the deal emotionally, he spies a familiar figure heading his way: Graydon Carter, the woolly-haired gatekeeper of Vanity Fair. He gets up and greets the editor: "It's Gordon. Gordon Gekko. Congratulations. Love the work you're doing."

Carter, clearly not recognizing the onetime Fortune cover boy, mutters, "Oh, thanks very much," before continuing to the door. Following right behind: Gekko's fed-up daughter.

On the surface, times have indeed changed since the first movie introduced this slick, suspender-sporting embodiment of Reagan-era capitalism. Anyone who has seen the film recently can't help but be taken aback by the now-ridiculous brick-size cellphone Gekko so proudly totes around. (That retro piece of tech as well as Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox earn cameos in the second Wall Street.)

But there was a recession then. There's a recession now. And greed, which Michael Douglas as Gekko so memorably declared as being good in the role that won him an Oscar, hasn't just survived. It has thrived amid easy credit, subprime mortgages and a nation that ignored the signs of a coming market collapse.

Which is the main reason why director Oliver Stone, who has made a good living out of documenting crucial moments in America's recent past with such movies as Born on the Fourthof July,JFK and World Trade Center, deigned to do his first sequel.

'Superficial rich'

"In my father's world, making a million was a ton," says Stone, the son of a stockbroker. "I come back to Wall Street now, and it's not a million dollars. It's a billion dollars. And a billion is nothing. They don't even consider that the beginning of a hedge fund. That is what is amazing about the '90s and 2000s — how rich people got. But it is a weird kind of rich. Maybe a superficial rich."

He passed on the initial script for a follow-up. But then Douglas and returning producer Edward R. Pressman brought him a new draft, and he finally bit. "I guess the crash, which happened in the meantime, made it more interesting. But I didn't want to do anything to glorify the pigs. Because they were pigs, and we know that."

It was the personal relationships between the characters that most attracted him. "We have three generations, and they are all vying for power."

Besides an older and bitter Gekko, there is Shia LaBeouf's Jacob Moore, a 20-ish hedge-fund trader who just happens to be engaged to Winnie (Carey Mulligan of An Education) and strikes a secret alliance with his future father-in-law. Plus, Josh Brolin is the new-style Gekko, a cold-blooded fortysomething investment banker named Bretton James who becomes Jacob's boss after his former mentor, played by Frank Langella, dies.

1987 was a very big year

For Douglas, 65, revisiting the white-collar icon — who rivals Hannibal Lecter in popularity when it comes to movie villains — is a pleasure, especially since he hasn't had a film with much cultural influence since he played a drug czar in 2000's Traffic.

Recalling 1987, he says, "It was sort of my year as an actor that really changed everything." Not only did he win an Academy Award as Gekko, but he also starred in the erotic box-office sensation Fatal Attraction. His biggest previous success was as a producer on the 1975 best-picture winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Before Wall Street, "People would say to me, 'Why do you want to act? Why don't you just produce?' "

He also welcomed the chance to reunite with Stone, who was on his own career high after 1986's Platoon won best picture and director. "He always creates a slamdance — it's in your face," Douglas says. "His style is halfway between a docudrama and opera. He threatened me the first time around. I mean that in the best sense. He tests you. He's a Vietnam vet. You are either in the trenches with him or you're not."

Gladly taking the leap into those trenches is LaBeouf, eager to show he can do more than skedaddle away from computer-generated metal giants in the Transformers blockbusters.

"It was a nice opportunity for me as an actor," he says. "I'm an Oliver Stone fan, the script was really good, and I knew it would be a really top-notch cast."

He impressed those around him by enthusiastically researching the heady world of proprietary trading, arriving in Manhattan 2½ months early to learn the ropes. And the attitude.

"It is a live-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mentality," he says. "I talked to a lot of Goldman Sachs people, and one of the requirements of getting a job takes place in the first five minutes of an interview. They take you out to eat. The minute the menu hits the table, if you can't order within 30 seconds, you don't have the job."

Being in the new Wall Street had some side benefits, such as when he put his newfound trading skills to work. "I opened up an account when I first met Oliver," LaBeouf says. "It was $20,000. This morning, it was $297,000."

Another plus: He and Mulligan, the 24-year-old British breakout star who probably will be in the Oscar race this year, became a couple off-screen, too.

"They are an item, and there you go," Douglas says. "I warned them, 'Don't ever do that.' But they are having a great time."

For those who think Gekko is reformed after being behind bars or undergoes redemption in the sequel, Stone assures that this is one creature who still has some tricks up his well-pressed sleeves. "He might have the charm of a Michael Douglas, but he is a reptile at heart."

[Gold Trumpet]

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4079680

Longer interview with Stone, but lots of relevant details about his Secret History project and Wall Street 2. Interesting things said about Wall Street 2 is that Stone sees the film as a comedy and that the rough cut was finished a few days before the interview and Stone was depressed about it because when he saw it, his first thought to himself was, "I really fucked this up." He said that happens with rough cuts in general, but he had to be reassured by his collaborator that the next cuts could only get better. But in the interview, Stone looked really depressed and was forthright about how he felt. I've never seen that kind of honesty before, especially for a film that hasn't been released yet.

[mogwai]

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4079680

Longer interview with Stone, but lots of relevant details about his Secret History project and Wall Street 2. Interesting things said about Wall Street 2 is that Stone sees the film as a comedy and that the rough cut was finished a few days before the interview and Stone was depressed about it because when he saw it, his first thought to himself was, "I really fucked this up." He said that happens with rough cuts in general, but he had to be reassured by his collaborator that the next cuts could only get better. But in the interview, Stone looked really depressed and was forthright about how he felt. I've never seen that kind of honesty before, especially for a film that hasn't been released yet.

That's funny, I think his body of work after 1995 has only been comedies (Excluding "WTC").

[Gold Trumpet]

Official title is, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. I'm getting used to it. Fixed

Trailer premieres tomorrow on Entertainment Tonight. Hopefully an unedited, non-ET host obstructed version will appear soon after.

[©brad]

Teaser time!

hahah, I dig it.

[Gold Trumpet]

Haha, it's a great teaser trailer. That being said, it also looks like it could be misleading. The teaser suggests an energy boosting style to the film, but because all the cuts in the trailer are to show characters that can't fit into the two scenes, the final style could be more drab and less about Stone's exciting ability to edit well.

Also, the poster. It's boring, but I like its dusty look. It's all about tone. EDIT: Better version of poster now up.

[Gold Trumpet]

International Trailer here.

Trailer hype is still fool's gold, but since I'm a geek for Stone, all this new footage is awesome to behold.

[Gold Trumpet]

Early buzz? Funny considering Stone himself hated the first cut of the film. This screening could be describing a later cut, but I worry what will make Wall Street 2 entertaining to early preview audiences has little to do with what Stone is sincerely good at. Even if I don't want to admit it, this film had a lot of walk on elements for Stone and so he could be depraving himself to a script that was interested in being thrilling in standard ways. Even if Stone was able to change a lot of things, a worry could be that he couldn't change enough.

Funny, but the only thing in the review I have confidence in is Shia Lebeouf having more acting chops than Charlie Sheen and being able to better handle himself with the acting heavyweights.

Early Buzz: Wall Street 2 is "a Strong Return to Form for Both Stone and Douglas"

Posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 by Peter Sciretta
Source: Slash Film
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Apparently there was a secret Los Angeles screening last night for Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. It must have been pretty exclusive, because I can't seem to find any details in all the usual places. A friend of Jeffrey Wells' friend attended, and wrote up a short review for Hollywood Elsewhere. Here is a short excerpt:

   "...it's a strong return to form for both Stone and Douglas. It also proves Shia can play with the big boys. A surprisingly satirical movie. It's the first time I've heard a Stone movie described as 'fun.'"... "It's an entertaining movie with Shia a better match for Douglas than Sheen, who was a stiff. It's a sardonic, slightly satirical film with Josh Brolin and particularly Frank Langella scoring well." ... "Stone handles the show without either his heavy left hand or his neutered right one that made W not what we'd hoped it. Douglas is the big-ticket item, of course, and revisiting this character is clearly a joy for him..."

Wells also got word from Wall Street 2 producer Ed Pressman, calling "Oliver's first cut ... brilliant, witty, complex and emotionally powerful. I couldn't be happier." But what else is the producer of the film going to say? Head on over to Elsewhere to read the full comments and more. I dug the last international trailer quite a bit (aside from them possibly giving too much away) and now I'm even more excited to hear the film might actually be good.