Director Craig Gillespie joins Dev Patel for Chippendales thriller

Director Craig Gillespie has joined Dev Patel for a new true-crime thriller documenting the rise and fall of the Chippendales empire.

The filmmaker, who helmed the critically-acclaimed I, Tonya, is attached to serve as a director on the project, which has been in the works for more two decades, according to Deadline.

Patel has been onboard since 2017, when he signed up to play Indian-American entrepreneur Somen 'Steve' Banerjee, who co-founded the iconic male strip club in the 1980s.

The film follows the true story of how Banerjee transformed struggling Los Angeles club Destiny II, with the help of former partners Paul Snider and Bruce Nahin, into a new hotspot which featured the now-iconic male exotic dance troupe.

The trio became millionaires, but their legacy was destroyed by violence when Snider killed his Playboy Playmate girlfriend Dorothy Stratten – who helped design the signature cuff and collar uniforms of the Chippendales – in a brutal murder-suicide in 1980.

Banerjee was also involved in plots to kill two of his former partners and two ex-dancers and pleaded guilty to hiring a hitman to murder his former choreographer Nick De Noia. However, he committed suicide on the morning of his sentencing in 1994.

Ben Stiller was previously attached to play De Noia, but has since moved on to focus on directing projects instead, Deadline reports.