Dev Patel is star­ring in a film about the male striptease troupe Chippendales

Like so many ele­ments of the all-male exot­ic dance revue Chip­pen­dales, the road to pro­duc­tion on the film about it has been long and hard. A drama­ti­za­tion of the strip­ping empire’s unsa­vory found­ing has been lan­guish­ing in devel­op­ment hell for no less than two decades as attached tal­ent came and went, but it looks like the show may actu­al­ly go on this time around.

Dead­line has the exclu­sive that the long-ges­tat­ing project has hooked a new direc­tor in Craig Gille­spie, most recent­ly known for the sim­i­lar­ly styl­ized true-crime yarn I, Tonya. (Next year, osten­si­bly, bar­ring the even­tu­al­i­ty of every­thing some­how get­ting much worse, he’ll return to the­aters with the Cruel­la de Vil solo pic­ture star­ring Emma Stone.) And as for a star, the team has retained the ser­vices of Dev Patel in the lead­ing role for years – he’s in it to win it.

He’s going to por­tray Steve Baner­jee, an Indi­an emi­grant come to Cal­i­for­nia in search of his for­tune dur­ing the gar­ish, coke-dust­ed ​’80s. He made his nut, so to speak, off the con­cept for a strip show con­sist­ing of buff hunks in lit­tle more than col­lars and cuffs, expand­ing the brand to a nation­wide chain of clubs, a tour­ing show trav­el­ing all over the globe, and a mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful line of cal­en­dars fea­tur­ing their finest performers.

But greed and nar­cotics exac­er­bat­ed ten­sions between Baner­jee and his part­ners, includ­ing Paul Snider (mur­dered his girl­friend, Play­boy bun­ny Dorothy Strat­ten, and then took his own life) and Nick Denoia (whacked by a hit­man hired by Baner­jee). They both fig­ure promi­nent­ly into the film, with the lat­ter fig­ure a key sup­port­ing role, hav­ing been pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied by a now-else­where Ben Stiller.

For Patel, who’s spent his career since Skins play­ing decent guys most­ly on the up-and-up, being a vio­lent, self-involved lowlife will present an intrigu­ing depar­ture. Though it does pose the ques­tion of who could like­wise go against type as Denoia, the sleaze respon­si­ble for recruit­ing the thong-wear­ing beef­steaks in their num­bers; I think Jon­ah Hill could work in that Stil­ler­ian vein.