In what is hopefully a stepping stone to a starring role in future Magic Mike movies, Dev Patel is making his own movie about male strippers, though we regret to inform you that his character will not be stripping. Per Deadline, Patel has signed on to star across from Ben Stiller in Chippendales, a film about the early days of the male-stripping empire. Patel will play Somen “Steve” Banerjee, an immigrant from Bombay who turned his L.A. dive into a male strip club. Stiller will play choreographer Nick De Noia. The film, which has been in development for decades, promises to “explore the perversion of the American dream,” and will likely cover the rise of Chippendales, co-founder Paul Snider’s murder of his girlfriend Dorothy Stratten and subsequent suicide (seen in Bob Fosse’s Star 80), and De Noia’s murder, which Banerjee pled guilty to orchestrating. Think of it as Boogie Nights, but with more cuff links.
