Oliver Stone Talks Wall Street 2

Oliver Stone Talks Wall Street 2

By Russ Fischer/Sept. 8, 2009 7:55 am EST

When last we saw Gekko, he was presumably about to be jailed for insider trading. “When Gekko comes out of prison in the beginning of this movie, he essentially has to redefine himself, redefine his character,” Mr. Stone tells the New York Times. “He’s looking for that second chance.” He’ll face off against Josh Brolin as the “arch-villain”, Brighton James, “the head of a fictional investment bank.”

But while there is a new young (possible) protege character, played by Shia LaBeouf, as Stone discusses the film it sounds like the banking system will be the biggest new character. " It’s a relatively complex story," he says, “and we’re trying to do justice to the new Wall Street.” The new film will skip the stock market trading floor, which in 1987, before internet stock trading made the system available and comprehensible to everyone, was foreign territory. Now the action will happen in the Federal Reserve building. “In the original ‘87 movie there was no Federal Reserve, we didn’t get into that,” says Stone. “But now the world has changed radically. This is part of the bulwark of the system.” And the greed is still there; it’s almost like the first movie never happened. “I thought those days were going to come to an end. The excess.”

Wall Street 2:  Money Never Sleeps begins filming in New York today.