WASHINGTON — Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone is again taking on the financial world in a sequel to 1987’s successful Wall Street, but this time he said greed is not only good — it’s legal.
Stone just finished filming Wall Street 2 and dropped a few hints while talking to a class at American University late Wednesday that focuses on his work.
The movie again stars Michael Douglas as corporate raider Gordon Gekko, a character who preached “greed is good” and earned Douglas an Academy Award in 1988. But this time Gekko takes a back seat to what Stone said are today’s financial power players.
“The individual Gekko would no longer exist in this new Wall Street,” Stone said, referring to the boom before the recent financial meltdown. “The big players now are major banks and hedge funds . . . the money’s too big.”
In the new film, he said, “greed is now legal.”
The movie, due out next year, is a complicated but familiar story with greed and envy as central themes, Stone said.