Matt Greenhalgh, the screenwriter responsible for the much-lauded Ian Curtis biopic Control, has signed on to script a film dramatising the early life of John Lennon. Nowhere Boy will be based on a memoir by the Beatles legend’s half-sister, Julia Baird, Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon. It’s certainly not a rose-tinted account, which should give Greenhalgh plenty of meat to work with.

“When looking for my next project I was wary of musical protagonists – but when John Lennon was floated, that vanished. He is beyond music; above it even,” Greenhalgh told The Guardian. “And his early life as told in Julia’s book took me into a world that illuminated so much about this legendary genius. I could see the drama and film immediately. The women in his life, the men who weren’t, the birth of rock’n’roll; all imposing on a brilliantly complicated adolescent mind.

“The nagging questions, the icy secrets, the need for love. John’s angst and anger pouring out into his music, his thankful salvation. Without this story we would never have heard the Beatles – can you imagine that?”