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“I say it here, it comes out there.” I don’t know if anyone else has been giving this any hard consideration but Jeff Wells and I touched on this in our last Oscar Poker podcast – this idea of Michael Douglas kind of smashing the competition in the supporting category for Wall Street 2. Deadline’s Pete Hammond says he has no official confirmation but that Fox is maybe leaning in that direction.
I think it’s a great idea. Douglas won an Oscar the first time around for Wall Street playing this character, and I have to wonder if he might not become the first actor to win twice for playing the same character. Has it ever happened? No, says Hammond:
If Douglas does manage a nomination, the odds are longer for a win. Douglas already has two Oscars, including one as producer of the 1975 Best Picture, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. His 1987 Best Actor Oscar for Wall Street reps his only recognition and nomination for acting. No thesp has ever won two Oscars for playing the same character, although four, to my count, have been in contention twice for essaying the same role. (Al Pacino as Michael Corleone was nominated for Supporting Actor in 1972 for The Godfather and upped to lead actor in 1974’s The Godfather Part ll. Peter O’Toole played King Henry ll in two unrelated films, Becket (1964) and again in The Lion In Winter (1968), winning Best Actor noms for both. Bing Crosby took back to back noms as Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells Of St. Mary’s (1945), winning for the former. And a quarter of a century passed before Paul Newman finally won as Fast Eddie Felson in The Color Of Money (1986) after first being nominated for the role in 1961’s The Hustler. I always thought Newman was robbed for the latter (Maximilian Schell in Judgment At Nuremberg beat him) so his eventual Felson victory 25 years later was a sweet Oscar moment.
Douglas is the best thing about Wall Street 2 by a long mile, and even though the film has gotten this or that criticism and bombed at the box office, yadda yadda yadda — this isn’t the craziest idea ever floated.
The contrast between the Douglas then and the Douglas now, and Gekko’s own evolution, is significant. It wouldn’t be a sympathy win, in my opinion, but a well deserved one – a very good performance in a not so great film. Finally, Hammond says that the competition is stiff. I agree that it’s stiff, with Geoffrey Rush specifically, but also Christian Bale for The Fighter, Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right, etc. But I don’t think it’s that stiff.
One thing we know for sure: he has very little chance of being nominated for this role for lead actor.