Can it be? Can it really be more than 20 years since Gordon Gekko ruled Wall Street, since greed was good, since Oliver Stone and his camera first ventured deep into the canyons of Lower Manhattan? Today, with the markets still recovering from their recent free fall and financial titans doing pratfalls on the national stage, the news that Stone has returned to film a sequel can summon up only one reaction: Gordon Gekko is back. Of course.

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But wait. For Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, due in theaters later this year, we are asked to believe that, in a return to one of his greatest roles, the silver-maned Michael Douglas will play Gekko, fresh from a 20-year prison sentence, as—no, it can’t be!—a good guy? “When Gekko comes out of prison, in the beginning of this movie, he essentially has to redefine himself,” says Stone. “He’s looking for that second chance.”

He gets it in a plot that pivots around Shia LaBeouf as Jacob “Jake” Moore, a hungry young hedge-funder who is dating Gekko’s estranged daughter, Winnie, played by Carey Mulligan. Jake believes that his boss, Bretton James, played by the omnipresent Josh Brolin, has somehow had a hand in the death of Jake’s mentor. Gekko agrees to aid the fresh-faced Jake in his plans for revenge.

Yes, the world has changed, but can Gordon Gekko? Douglas, for one, is playing things coy. “Gekko couldn’t manipulate the markets like he did back then,” he says. “It’s so big, so huge, that to be a minor player you need to be a major bank.” Or want to be. Hmm.