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Dev Patel, Chippendales, and Murder? Finally, Some Good News.

By Oct 14th, 2020, 1:49 pm

Dev Patel looks sad in the green knight

Dev Patel is hanging up his David Copperfield hat and his Gawain sword to bring us a look into the unknown world of Chippendales. I love Dev Patel’s entire filmography more than anything else in this world.

Patel will be playing Somen “Steve” Banerjee, an Indian-American entrepreneur whose failures led to his cofounding of the Chippendales night club. Now, I know about the Chippendales dancers, but I did not know that the creation of the original strip club was surrounded by murder, so now I’m really interested in learning more about Chippendales. (Yes, it absolutely helps that Dev Patel is in this movie.)

Directed by I, Tonya’s Craig Gillespie (AGAIN, GREAT NEWS FOR ME), it is yet another film for Gillespie in the “true-crime” genre, and honestly, great!

As for the story, when you start to look into it, there are multiple murder plots and instances of violence surrounding the creation of Chippendales, and it’s honestly fascinating.

Patel’s Banerjee cofounded Chippendales with Paul Snider, and the iconic look of the dancers would come from Snider’s wife, Playboy model Dorothy Stratten. But Snider would go on to murder Stratten in a murder-suicide, and Banerjee would go on to become entangled in his own murder plots that would eventually lead to pleading guilty and his own death (of apparent suicide) prior to his sentencing.

It’s a weirdly timely film in the sense of it being about the American dream and greed of wanting it all, and lengths to which people will go to achieve it. And with Patel leading the charge, I’m going to love every single second of it.

Twitter erupted in excitement for the film, and let’s be honest, it’s because of Dev Patel. We just all really love Dev Patel.

Am I prepared to watch Dev Patel attempt to do a murder? Probably not, but I will watch anything he and Craig Gillespie chose to do, so SIGN ME UP.

(image: A24 Films)

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Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. A writer her whole life but professionally starting back in 2016 who loves all things movies, TV, and classic rock. Resident Spider-Man expert, official Leslie Knope, actually Yelena Belova. Wanda Maximoff has never done anything wrong in her life. Star Wars makes her very happy. New York writer with a passion for all things nerdy. Yes, she has a Pedro Pascal podcast. And also a Harrison Ford one.