It looks like the long-gestating Chippendales murder movie is finally moving forward, with Deadline reporting that Bold Films has agreed to finance the picture, which has Dev Patel and Ben Stiller in talks to star.
Patel will play Steve Banerjee, a Bombay-born immigrant who turned an LA dive bar into a multimillion-dollar cultural zeitgeist sensation, while Stiller will portray Emmy-winning children’s show producer Nick DeNoia, who was responsible for recruiting and choreographing the troupe of male strippers.
Banerjee and his partners would soon preside over an empire worth $8 million a year, although things would take a sordid turn, leading to the murder of DeNoia, for which Banerjee would subsequently plead guilty of orchestrating before taking his own life.
“It is the Horatio Alger story gone horribly wrong,” said Bold Films’ Gary Michael Walters. “It is a true life Boogie Nights, a wild ride through the seamy underbelly where entertainment and criminality meet, during a period where the pendulum swung toward female sexuality.”
The project has been in development for twenty years under producer David Permut, passing through the hands of the likes of Oliver Stone, Tony Scott, Barry Sonnenfeld and David Michod. A new director is yet to be found, but the producers are looking to lock one down in time to behind production early next year.
Originally published July 17, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
