Wall Street 2: Director Oliver Stone Shocked at Institutionalized Sharks

The (first) film’s popularity grew over the years,” adds director Oliver Stone, who was initially surprised by the way audiences embraced Gekko. “I made ‘Wall Street’ as a morality tale, and I think it was misunderstood by many. It’s still amazing the number of people who came up to me over the years and said, ‘I took on a career on Wall Street because of your movie.’ Many of them are now in their 30s, 40s and were doing quite well on the Street -- as honest traders, I should add.”

“What shocked me was this exponentially-growing accumulation of wealth kept going, into the 1990s and 2000s,” says Stone. “The numbers grew and grew, so the millions of dollars became billions of dollars. And the greed of Gordon Gekko was swamped by the greed of the banks.

“By 2008, no more Gordon Gekkos were possible,” he continues. “That character, was now gone, replaced by institutions that had once formerly been regulated. In the past, a bank was a bank, and an insurance company was an insurance company. In 2008, that all changed. The firewalls between these functions were destroyed by the deregulation of the 1980s and 90s. The crash happened in 2008 and that made it suddenly very interesting, because you saw all the flaws in the system,” explains Stone. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is really a reckoning with what happened.”

.”Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps” will open September 29 in theaters from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Source: 20th Century Fox Publicist Mae R. Vecina

Category: Movies