Greed is good for Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in Oliver Stone's Wall Street. (Fox Video)

Wow, financial panic can make people do some pretty nutty things. Take, for example, this morning's announcement that FOX has greenlighted a sequel to the seminal '80s film Wall Street, more than 20 years after the era-defining original came out.

Particularly in our current state of fiscal uncertainty, there's something about the choice to revisit such brazenly pro-capitalist material that doesn't sit right. Even the rumours that the film will follow Michael Douglas's cash-crazed Gordon Gekko, now released from jail (the ending of 1987's Wall Street was deliberately ambiguous, though the implication was that the craven corporate raider ended up behind bars), as he attempts to navigate a "much more tumultuous financial world than the one he once lorded over."

It's a tricky proposition. With his "greed is good" mantra, Gekko epitomized take-no-prisoners '80s Reaganomics; the prospect of watching that character wade through the ruins of a collapsed market (particularly if he's learned Valuable Moral Lessons in jail) feels counterintuitive. And though Allan Loeb, who's attached to write the screenplay, can draw on his background as a licensed stockbroker, his film credits are mediocre at best: the horrendously maudlin Halle Berry/Benicio Del Toro tear-jerker Things We Lost In The Fire and the ghastly gambling flick 21 top the list. I suppose the latter was a ham-fisted cautionary tale about the perils of avarice, but that doesn't mean it was any good.

Greed: it's kinda-sorta not so good anymore.

--Sarah Liss