The dark comedy thriller has never stopped being popular.

Director Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" tells the tale of the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, who got rich and then got jail time by playing fast and loose with the stock market.

Hollywood has long had a fascination with finance and Wall Street. Given how the corporate world exerts a potent hold on American life, this is quite an understandable impulse. The 2008 financial ...