Great news for fans of male strippers and origin stories that sound like “Horatio Alger... gone horribly wrong:” The almost-too-good-to-be-true story of Chippendales is being made into a movie, starring Dev Patel (!!!).
In what’s being described as a “perversion of the American Dream theme,” Deadline reports that Chippendales will be something like Boogie Nights, but more alarming and that much more fun because the actual story of the rise and fall of Chippendales, the all-male exotic dancing franchise that started and peaked in the 1980s. Patel will pay Steve Banerjee, an immigrant from Bombay who founded Chippendales by turning a bar in Los Angeles into a “multimillion dollar cultural zeitgeist sensation.” Ben Stiller will also star, playing Nick DeNoia, a children’s show producer-turned stripper recruiter, who also choreographed the Chippendales’ routines and managed the touring company.
The true story of Banerjee’s male exotic dancer empire has just about everything: law suits, betrayal, hit men, beefcake calendars, and murder. DeNoia the character played by Stiller, was apparently shot in the face by a man hired by Banerjee, who also attempted to burn down the clubs of his competition. He also took a hit out on a former Chippendale’s choreographer. All of this scandal over some male strippers! Imagine.
There’s no director attached to the project yet, which has been an astonishing 20 years in the making and honestly, I’m not sure what all the big fancy directors of Hollywood are waiting for. This project sounds like a freaking dream.