Bloody awful title, reminiscent of Sunday feature journalism. It's a wait-and-see project at best.
Taylor-Wood plans Lennon biopicArtist Sam Taylor-Wood and Control writer Matt Greenhalgh to direct and write film about John Lennon's teenage yearsBen Child and agencies
Guardian.co.uk,
Friday August 29 2008 09:48 BST
John Lennon's troubled adolescence is to be the subject of a film from the writer of Control and the artist Sam Taylor-Wood.
Matt Greenhalgh, who won a Bafta for his screenplay about the final years of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, is to focus his script on the lonely teenage years of the future Beatle, who was raised by his authoritarian aunt after being abandoned by his mother. In the film, titled Nowhere Boy, Lennon finds solace in his music, art and friendship with Paul McCartney.
Taylor-Wood, who will be making her feature debut on the project, will shoot on location in Liverpool in the area where Lennon grew up. Casting is said to be underway on the project, and the Daily Mail reports today that Kate Winslet is being encouraged to audition for the role of Lennon's mother, Julia.
"The women in John's early life truly shaped who he became," Taylor-Wood told the Hollywood Reporter. "And the strengths and weaknesses of their relationships are central to this film."
The feature is being financed by Ecosse Films, with the support of the Film Council. It's not the first film to focus on Lennon, who as part of the Beatles was the subject of 1994's Backbeat, which focused on the band's early career in Hamburg. There was also 1991's The Hours and the Times, a fictionalised account of what might have happened when Lennon and Beatles manager Brian Epstein took a holiday together in 1963. Lennon was played by Ian Hart on both occasions.
Last year's The Killing of John Lennon centred on the final hours of Lennon's life from the perspective of his murderer, Mark Chapman.
While not having directed a feature film before, Taylor-Wood has a history working with musicians. She has produced films based on the Pet Shop Boys' Somewhere concerts at the Savoy theatre in London and made a promotional video starring Robert Downey Jr for the 2001 Elton John single I Want Love.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/aug/29/lennon.taylorwood