Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf Hit Cannes for Wall Street—What About Charlie Sheen?

Stars work the red carpet for the gala world premiere of Oliver Stone's anticipated sequel

Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Oliver Stone. Present and accounted for. But not so shockingly, Charlie Sheen didn't make the scene here in Cannes for the world premiere of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

The sequel to Stone's Oscar-winning 1988 flick had its world premiere today and the cast got all prettied up for a stroll down the Croisette.

We talked up the cast and saw the movie and can let you in on a little secret.

The beleaguered Sheen may have been MIA from the gala premiere, but he's not MIA from the movie. In a nod to his wild-man reputation, Sheen's compromised hero from the original Wall Street, Bud Fox, makes a brief appearance.

And the scene probably won't go over too well with Brooke Mueller. Eight years after his downfall in the first movie, Douglas' Gordon Gekko runs into his turncoat protégé at a charity ball, with Sheen's character sporting not one, but two blondes on his arms.

As for the stars who did show, Douglas talked to E! News about the timing being right to revisit the "greed is good" mantra.

"I think Oliver and I were both pretty stunned after the first one," says Douglas. "We just never anticipated that all these MBAs would...say this is what they wanted to be. And yet 22 years later, a lot of these MBA students are heading up these investment banking firms.

"This time around...this was an opportunity to take him to the bottom...Will Gordon have to change? Is he a changed man? We don't know."

Stone says the recent Wall Street scandals were the driving force behind the new film, and a chance to follow-up on one of his most famous characters.

"The movie starts with Gordon coming out of jail," explains the fillmmaker, "and he's a busted man, no family waiting for him, no real money, so it's another approach."

In Money Never Sleeps, Douglas tells daughter Winnie (Mulligan) how the drug-overdose death of her older brother, Gekko's only son, affected him while he was behind bars.

The scene is especially moving in light of the Oscar-winning actor's own family crisis: son Cameron was recently sentenced to five years in prison for dealing methamphetamine across state lines.

Douglas says that despite the difficulty, he's in a good place.

"Right now I'm very happily married with two young children," Douglas tells E! News. "It's been a tremendous thrill. Career-wise I'm very proud of Money Never Sleeps. I had a wonderful time making the picture with this tremendous cast."

But Douglas is a bit concerned about the film's commercial prospects. 

"I think it's a marketing dilemma," he says, suggesting that the currently wobbly state of the stock market "doesn't necessarily help our movie."

Stone, however, doesn't seem as worried.

"Fourth quarter on Wall Street is far more volatile so we'll be coming out right in the middle of the storm, Sept. 23 internationally," said the filmmaker. "I think it's much better. I think Cannes is a much better introduction point for us."

Wall Street 2 hits U.S. theaters Sept. 24.