Things change pretty fast in the financial world, as anyone watching the news over the several weeks should know. Among the many casualties of the recent economic downturn is the screenplay for 20th Century Fox’s Wall Street sequel that was being worked on by scripter Stanley Weiser. In an interview with at Ropes Of Silicon, Weiser briefly talks about what his take on the continuing story of Gordon Gekko would have been and why we won’t be seeing it at a theater near you.
Here’s what happened. I was working on the script and the latter part was set in China and dealing with Chinese money and policing the Chinese. Gekko gets out of jail. It actually opened with Gekko getting out of jail and he’s standing by a curb and a limo pulls up and he’s next to a black kid, who’s a prisoner, and the black kid gets in the limo. The black kid is a rapper and the limo is for the rapper. So he is left standing there on the street alone and no one knows who he is anymore.
Basically, he had gone to Europe, like this world trader Marc Rich. He had been making deals in Europe and then he decided he wanted to go back to New York and get back in the action. So he does his jail time.
To make a long story short. I wrote the screenplay and Fox put it in turnaround because it was dated. Everything has changed and they’re starting with a page one rewrite that deals with the current situation in the markets. So it won’t be ready for a year and by that time the economy will have changed again so I wouldn’t be too hopeful.
As we have reported, Fox has already hired Alan Loeb to work up a new story treatment for theproposed sequel. Previously, Stephen Schiff had been working with producer Ed Pressman on a script. But is Weiser correct? Will the producers of this film ever be ahead of the curve enough to be able to reflect the reality of the economy at the time the movie hits the screens?
