Lion star Dev Patel and comedy veteran Ben Stiller are currently set to star in Chippendales, a true life story based on the 80’s male strip club phenomenon founders Steve Banerjee and Nick Denoia.
Bold Films have just come on board the project to finance for the big screen but don’t be fooled by the title, the film may be about the rise of the 80’s muscle sculpted Adonis’s but the founders take centre stage as their greed and criminal activities took over their lives.
“It is the Horatio Alger story gone horribly wrong,” said Bold’s 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.”
Patel, if a deal is agreed upon, will play Steve Banerjee, who orchestrated the murder of his partner Nick Denoia, to be played by Ben Stiller. Anyone would think the story of these men and their partners came straight out of the movies. Lawsuits and disputes between Banerjee followed, leading to a violence-filled descent. DeNoia was murdered, shot in the face in his New York office.
Banerjee would plead guilty of orchestrating that murder, and for an attempt to burn down rival clubs, and for hiring a hit man for other murders including another former Chippendales choreographer. Hours before he was to be sentenced to a long prison sentence for murder, arson and racketeering in 1994, Banerjee was found hanged in his jail cell, his death ruled a suicide.
The script is written by Isaac Adamson and Permut Presentations’ David Permut, Bold’s owner Michel Litvak and Gary Michael Walters, and Red Hour’s Stiller and Nicky Weinstock.
