'Wall Street' Sequel Revives Gordon Gekko Just in Time For New Depression
Finally, word surfaces today about that rarest of rare Hollywood specimens: a sequel we can actually get behind. Not that we're wholeheartedly endorsing Fox's reported plans for a follow-up to Wall Street (and we reserve the right to revoke our support if "Wall Street 2" ever appears following the working title Money Never Sleeps), but the news that Oliver Stone's 1987 potboiler has a "fast-tracked" follow-up yields the kind of timely potential Lord knows we'll miss in so many of its sad, franchise-y contemporaries — plus a Charlie Sheen-free zone where we can comfortably reacquaint ourselves with one of our favorite '80s villains.Variety notes that Allan Loeb is working on the script; he previously wrote 21, a wobbly adaptation that nevertheless capitalized on card-shark fever en route to a $157 million worldwide gross earlier this year. With financial destitution having since replaced more innocuous gambling as all the rage six months later, we're not ashamed of our curiosity as to how Michael Douglas's cutthroat inside trader Gordon Gekko would shuffle back to Lower Manhattan to set things right for a new generation of ambitious douches like Bud Fox — the Sheen character whom Gekko disposably exploits before heading off for a long prison vacation. And how many Jim Cramer/Neil Cavuto/Marisa Bartiromo cameos will reintroduce Gekko to the business culture that's long since forsaken him? So many questions, though Fox has at least one unambiguous casting demand: The film won't happen without Douglas agreeing to reprise his Oscar-winning role. He's not officially attached (and neither Sheen nor Stone are expected to return), and Mel Gibson's brave stand against Lethal Weapon 5 has actors across town united against the perversion of their most celebrated characters. It's nothing former commodities trader Loeb can't fix, though, peppering his script with awards-clip-ready dialogue bites and, if possible, Gekko's redemption by single-handedly lifting the Street out of its historic funk. After all, the Dow was up 936 points Monday on news of the sequel alone! Let's put this crisis to bed today — make two sequels at the same time, Hobbit-style. Greed is good.