The director resurrected his Academy Award-winning 1987 film for a sequel, with Michael Douglas reprising his role as ruthless banker Gordon Gekko opposite Shia LaBeouf and Josh Brolin.
Much of the movie was based on the recent global economic crisis and Stone wanted to add realism by filming inside Goldman Sachs – but executives at the firm refused to deal with the film crew.
Stone tells Reuters, “The conservative banks would not deal with us, no. They would not let us in. Goldman sealed their floors to us. We did get pictures of the inside of it for production design reasons. They were very arrogant.”
And the filmmaker has praised bosses at the Royal Bank of Canada for agreeing to let them film inside their offices.
He adds, “Our biggest break came when the Royal Bank of Canada called back, and they were extremely gracious, they said, ‘By all means, we’d love you to shoot here.’ The Royal Bank of Canada was one of the few banks that behaved impeccably in this period and made a profit and continued on.
“That was a wonderful break for us, because it was a classy looking bank and gave us the right feeling that we needed for Goldman – I don’t want to say Goldman, I want to say ‘from The Bank’ in the film. Don’t pinpoint me.”
