Wall Street Is Hollywood’s Newest Villain

COMMENTS (16)

• Follow the money…

  Comment by Surprised? — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 2:48pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Too many of the folks on Wall Street are too petty to be good villains. I think a good villain has to have more than just greed to be interesting.

  Then there’s the stupidity that seems so rampant on Wall Street lately. More Abbott & Costello than Ernst Stavros Blofeld.

  Comment by Furious D — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 3:11pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Hollywood paints big business as villain? Stop the presses!!!

  Wake me when there’s a proper WWII-style war movie about Arab terrorists, the closest I’ve seen so far is _Team America_.. I don’t recall _Casablanca_ going into root causes of German grievances (humiliation at Versailles, economic hardship, cultural differences) or sympathizing with the enemy.

  Comment by Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 3:14pm PDT  Reply to this post

• The Wall Street followup movie has been in development for sometime — way before the current financial crises made itself apparent to the general public.

  Comment by Doctor Know — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 3:50pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Isn’t this a bad case of “the pot calling the kettle black?” Wall Street could learn even more about creative “book keeping” from the Hollywood Studios or maybe they could learn what the word “greed” really means.

  Comment by btl teamster — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 4:12pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I’m sure that these films/shows will fare as well as Iraq War movies.

  Films like to see people protecting the American way of life. They don’t want to see Americans in a questionable war in the Middle East or stock brokers being greedy/morally questionable.

  Maybe a Mr. Smith Goes to Wall Street type film could work but for the most part these ideas seem like Hollywood following current events rather than trying to figure out what audiences want.

  Comment by Kevin — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 4:44pm PDT  Reply to this post

• why would people want to watch that subject matter when it hits so close to home at this moment for many Americans? bad development. it’s like these films about the middle east that keep failing as many reporters have reminded us about lately — HELLO?! People want to ESCAPE from the problems going on right now not see it on the small or big screen. I’d love to name a big-time exec. that recently came up with a similar concept for a series – f–ing idiot.

  Comment by troy — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 7:17pm PDT  Reply to this post

• If the WALL STREET sequel is going to take place “after he’s released from prison” then I hope the sequel to the 1987 film takes place in 1993 because that’s about how long Gekko would have served with the worst lawyer ever.
  Not 21 years until today.
  Money buys justice and Gekko had plenty.

  Comment by ReelBusy — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 8:46pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Remember that huge Busby Berkley hit that came out during the depression, “G-ddamn You, Herbert Hoover?” No? That’s because in the early thirties, people wanted to see Shirley Temple dance up-and-down the stairs. Nobody goes to the movies to experience how fucked the economy is, people go to escape anxiety.

  Comment by TJ — Wednesday October 22, 2008 @ 12:53am PDT  Reply to this post

• Why not? And after that I suggest the uninspired Hollywoodland exec who decides to make a movie about a Wall Street shark. But his producer doesn’t want and he kills him. Then enter Columbo…

  Comment by Thierry Attard — Wednesday October 22, 2008 @ 2:16am PDT  Reply to this post

• I am reminded of the scene from “The Player” when Tim Robbins has a studio exec meeting and Peter Gallager’s character was pitching movie ideas and story lines out of the coverage in the news paper instead of hiring writers. Robbin’s character’s sarcastic response.
  “Yea, now if we could just get rid of the directors and actors we might be on to something”.

  Comment by Paul Satterfield — Wednesday October 22, 2008 @ 5:13am PDT  Reply to this post

• Law & Order scribes writing episodes with financial bigwigs and their flaws & follies is not ‘new’.

  They did stories like this back in the earliest seasons (when there was a mild recession in 1990-1992), they did this again around the time of the bursting of the Internet stock bubble and now they’re doing it again.

  The ‘new’ part will be mentioning things like CDS’s and a few other forms of leverage which did not come into vogue until the past few years.

  That said I’m hoping for some stellar writing and some darned good entertainment from the venerable mothership…given that GE is a conglomerate that among other things dabbles in entertainment, they’ll have to try to entertain us in spite of their clueless corporate bosses…I am keeping my fingers crossed for them but will not be surprised if the corporate villains on the screen are emasculated or painted in a prettier light than they should be by their real-life counterparts.

  Comment by vdovault — Wednesday October 22, 2008 @ 3:52pm PDT  Reply to this post

• There was a project about the enron collapse… I think it was bought by DiCaprio’s company a while back… what happened with that?

  If you want to see something with entertainment potential, see the Enron – the Smartest Guys in the room. It’s an eye opening documentary about the corporate greed that lead to the collapse of Enron and Arthur Anderson (a top tiered accounting firm).

  It’s brilliant… and would make a great film.

  Comment by Zanzibar — Wednesday October 22, 2008 @ 5:59pm PDT  Reply to this post

• As a hedge fund trader of a multi billion $ fund. Lets make it a comedy! Trust me it’s not so glamorous.

  Comment by longridge — Thursday October 23, 2008 @ 6:35pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Who needs fiction?

  This is reality television for those of us who NEVER watch reality television —unless you count the news.

  How about a cause -effect-recover the money-throw the swine in jail instead of off the island thingie?

  Since unfortunately we really can’t kill these guys, how about just siccing lawyers on them and making them totally wish they were dead instead?

  It would at least make for a lot of happy lawyers. Maybe you could find lawyers that are in danger of having their homes foreclosed on.
  As if.

  Comment by gala1 — Tuesday October 28, 2008 @ 6:24pm PDT  Reply to this post

• If you eliminate all the bad guys who are unacceptable because of PC notions, it doesn’t leave a lot of choices. Big Business it is!

  Comment by pj — Friday February 20, 2009 @ 8:07pm PST  Reply to this post