Every few years we’re reminded of just how popular The Beatles still are when we see a mini wave of Beatlemania sweep over the world for a short period of time. This year was one of those years. We had the album reissues, Beatles Rock Band, talk of a Yellow Submarine remake, a John Lennon biopic (Nowhere Boy) and now… yes, another John Lennon biopic.

Variety is reporting that BBC Four has commissioned this latest biopic with none-other than Christopher Eccleston playing the great man himself, in a new film titled Naked Lennon.

Rather than following Lennon’s earlier pre-Beatles years. This time we’ll get to see a take on the 1967 to 1971 period, when manager Brian Epstein had died, his marriage to Cynthia was failing and Yoko came into his life only to cause tension with Paul McCartney, and eventually The Beatles split.

Personally I can’t wait to see a story from this period of his life.

We’ve had a couple of stories that focused on the earlier years with Backbeat and Nowhere Boy, and I don’t think the post-Beatles ‘bed-in’ part of his life was all that interesting other than the incredibly depressing assassination, which has also been covered in Chapter 27. So we’re left with the stuff in the middle, which for me is the best part.

I’ll be curious to see how they portray Yoko Ono (Naoko Mori). Will they take the popular route of casting her as the destroyer of The Beatles, or will they show us the side of her that Lennon saw?

As for Christopher Eccleston playing Lennon. Well he has similar features and he is a great actor, although after his dreadful Scottish accent in G.I. Joe, I’m hoping he employs the services of a good dialogue coach to get the ’scouse’ accent down.