More than once it has occurred to me to do a finance film...
Some of my godchildren are in that biz, and a spin out from my last firm does serious special effects such as bits of Harry Potter, etc. I have a huge stock of anecdotes from my own career and those who drink with me, all are authentic, some are even true.
Getting a real trading floor would not be all that hard, done properly the various vendors would pay good money to have their kit showcased. You think Reuters & Bloomberg would have a fight over who got to be the screens ?
There is a 'spare' empty floor in the centre of the City of London due to Citi making a bet that went wrong, some phone calls would get me one in NY/NJ.Also there a useful amount of expensively empty office space. If you were marketing terribly expensive floors, I'd bet you'd keen on a film that showed it as a glamorous location.
I'd call it "Love over Gold", a romance of mathematics & money, stealing wantonly from Romeo & Juliet, Fooled by Randomness, and Paul Wilmott on Quantitative Finance (and yes the theme music would be by Mark Knopfler).
The heroes work for two banks competing in a market where heads of both firms hate each other, a lot.
We have the opportunity to cut between scenes where traders shaft each other in the market, to ones where they use their fists in a bar. So we have sex, violence, money and based upon true stories, what more can a film really need to make obscene money ?
The scene where Romeo is banished for fighting can be trivially cut & paste to turn it into being sent to Frankfurt, since he'd quite rightly poison himself than move there.
It is a beautiful coincidence that "poison pill" applies to the scenes in Verona and and corporate finance.
The friar who helps the young lover / traders is of course a headhunter
We start with a prologue and apologies to William:
Bloomberg TV announcer (pick your favourite) :
Two corporations, both alike in dignity,
In fair New York, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
If you care to learn this foretold mess,
which two lovers fooled by randomness.
