Anton Corbijn’s Joy Division/Ian Curtis biopic Control wasn’t necessarily a commercial smash hit, but it attracted a lot of attention from people in the know. Not only is the movie’s star Sam Riley rumoured to be starring in Ridley Scott’s upcoming Nottingham movie, but now the writer Matt Greenhalgh is chasing down another even bigger biopic.

According to the BBC, Greenhalgh just received funding from the UK Film Council to develop a movie about the life and times of John Lennon. The movie, tentatively titled Nowhere Boy, will be based on the book Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon, written by Lennon’s younger half sister Julia Baird. Said Greenhalgh: “I could see the drama and film immediately – the women in his life, the men who weren’t, the birth of rock and roll, all imposing on a brilliantly complicated adolescent mind… Without this story, we would never have heard The Beatles – can you imagine that?”

To my knowledge, there has never been a definitive John Lennon biopic, although in the last year or two there have been a couple of movies about his killer Mark David Chapman, which is just strange. Assuming he gets the right talent on board, this movie could be absolutely huge. Of course, it’s also a pretty big risk: if Greenhalgh doesn’t do the story justice, he’ll surely alienate a lot of Beatles fans. Can we interest Anton Corbijn in directing this one as well?

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