Si Tong asked Charlie Sheen to choose a father between Jack Lemmon and martin sheen to play his role, and Charlie chose his father Martin. Martin sheen and his opponent Carl have similar moral values. Si Tong chose daryl hannah to play Daryl Taylor, Bud Fox's materialistic girlfriend, but she always felt that Hannah didn't like the role and didn't understand why she wanted to play it again. He thinks Hannah is troubled because Taylor's materialism conflicts with her idealism, so he tries to explain the role to her many times. Si Tong knew early on that she was not fit for the role. "Daryl Hannah is not happy to play this role. I should have let her quit. One day, after the filming was finished, everyone in the crew wanted to ask her to leave, but I was so proud that I kept saying that I would handle it. " Si Tong had a tense relationship with another actress, sean young, who publicly declared that Hannah should be fired and replaced by herself. Yang and he couldn't get along, which led to further friction on the set. In retrospect, I think Yang's opinion is right. She should change her roles with Hannah. Si Tong admitted that he and sean young were "somewhat unhappy", but he refused to confirm or deny the rumor that Yang took all the costumes of his character after filming. Si Tong wanted the film to start shooting in new york and asked for a budget of at least $654.38 million+$050,000, which was in the middle level in 1960s and 1980s. However, the production company that previously invested in Wild Pai thought the project was too risky to agree, so Plesmann, the director and producer, contacted 20th Century Fox, which accepted the plan. The film started shooting in April, 1987, and ended on July 4th. According to Si Tong, he is making a movie about sharks and curiosity. Bob and I want the camera to be a predator. There is no slack in this until you repair Charlie's father's world, and then give you a constant sense of value with a fixed lens. "The director regards Wall Street as a battlefield. He made the scene of dialogue between characters seem as if two people were fighting, while the scene of multiple characters together made the camera revolve around the actors "to make you feel like you are in a swimming pool with sharks".
Jeffrey Mad Dog Beck, an investment banker, is one of the technical consultants of the film. He made a guest appearance in the film and spoke at the meeting to discuss the dissolution of Blue Star Company. Kenneth Lipper, an investment banker and former vice mayor in charge of financial and economic development in new york, was hired as the chief technical consultant of the film. At first, he thought the film would only be a unilateral attack, and rejected Si Tong. The director asked him to reconsider, so Lipper read the script and wrote a 13 page commentary. For example, he pointed out that all characters are "morally bankrupt", which is unrealistic. Lippert suggested to Si Tong the type of computer to be used in the trading hall, the exact proportion of women in business meetings, and what kind of extras to sit at Gekko's annual shareholders' meeting where he gave a speech "Greed is good". Si Tong accepted Lippert's criticism and invited him to rewrite the play. Lipper brought balance to the film, which also helped Si Tong enter the hall to shoot when the NYSE opened. On the role of Luo Mannheim, Lippert and Si Tong also had disputes. A scene shot by Si Tong shows honest Mannheim giving in to insider trading, which Lipper thinks may lead the audience to think that anyone who works on Wall Street is corrupt and insist on leaving an blameless role in the film. Si Tong later cut this set of shots.
Si Tong also consulted carl icahn, Ash edelman, convicted insider trader david brown, and several government prosecutors and Wall Street investment bankers. He also invited traders to coach the actors in the studio, teaching them how to hold the phone, how to write bills and how to talk to customers. Si Tong asked Lipper to design a six-week course to train Charlie Sheen as a young Wall Street businessman. Xin said: "I really admire them for being so positive and motivated."
Douglas hired a voice coach to practice breathing control in order to better adapt to the faster speech speed needed in the movie. According to him, shortly after the film started shooting, the director also tested the effect of his training by strengthening his "repressed anger". Once Si Tong entered Douglas's trailer and asked him if he had taken drugs, because "you look as if you have never acted", which frightened Douglas, so he did more research, practiced his lines repeatedly, and was more strict with himself than ever before. All efforts reached a climax in the sentence "greed is good". Si Tong originally planned to use the cover of Fortune magazine in the film in exchange for advertising, but Forbes magazine also made similar suggestions. The director finally chose Fortune, which made Malcolm Forbes, the boss of Forbes, unhappy. He later refused the crew's request to borrow his yacht. In order to finish the main shooting of the film before the possible strike of the American Directors' Union, Si Tong increased the daily shooting time from 12 hours to 14 hours in the last few weeks. Xin remembers always looking at scripts and watches. He is always worried about the time and budget of the movie. Wall Street has always been regarded as the prototype portrayal of 1980, especially Douglas's sentence "There is no better word than greed". Movies improve themselves by opposing money and power with simplicity and honesty, showing a lot of moral conflicts. Carl's role represents the working class in the film, and he is the chairman of the machinists' union of Blue Star Company. He often denounces all the people, things and things that he thinks will pose a threat to his trade union, such as big companies, money, compulsory drug screening and greedy manufacturers. The conflict between Gekko's unremitting pursuit of wealth and Karl Fox's ideas forms the basis of the subtext of this film. This subtext can be described as two fathers fighting for the control of their son's moral concept. Si Tong also used this concept in his previous film Pai. Carl Fox, who worked hard on Wall Street, and Gordon Gekko, who was fiercely competitive, both represented his father. In the film, the film producer regards Carl as his own spokesman, keeping a rational voice in the creative destruction caused by Gekko's unrestrained personal philosophy.
An important scene in the film is Gekko's speech at a shareholders' meeting, and he plans to take over the company. Si Tong used this scene to give Gekko a chance to rationalize his behavior, and to give the Wall Street marauders represented by Gekko a wider range. Gekko also made it unforgettable. He pointed out the laziness and waste accumulated by American enterprises in the postwar years and regarded himself as a "savior". The sentence "greed is good" is inspired by two aspects. First of all, Gekko complained that the manager of a company only owns less than 3% of the shares, and there are too many vice-president positions, which partly came from carl icahn's similar remarks about a company he tried to buy. The defense of greed comes from the speech given by Evan Boschi, an arbitrage trader who will be convicted of insider trading in the future, at the graduation ceremony of the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley in May 1986. He said, "By the way, greed is nothing. I hope you can understand. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself. "
Wall Street didn't criticize the capitalist system in an all-round way, but aimed at the cynicism and quick success and instant benefit culture of1980s. The "good" characters in the film are capitalists themselves, but they belong to the more stable and industrious part. There is a scene in the film in which Gekko sneers at Bud Fox's questioning about the moral value of hard work, and cites his father who worked hard all his life until his death as a typical example. Romenheim, the prototype of the good guy tutor, said shortly after the opening of the film that "good things sometimes take time", referring to IBM and Hilton. Accordingly, Gekko's "greed is good" is a typical short-term creed popular in1980s.