Liverpool is set to star in the new John Lennon biopic in Nowhere Boy, but the big screen adaptation of the Beatles legend's childhood could be scrapped before it is even in the can.
Shooting on the movie has already begun on location in Crosby and Ealing in London with Aaron Johnson as the young musician.
But director Sam Taylor-Wood's work may be halted if Beatleologist Geoffrey Giuliano gets his way.
The angry author not only wants the flick to never see the light of a projector, but also wants book on which it has been based to be impounded and pulped.
In 1986, while promoting one of his many books about the Fab Four, Giuliano met Lennon's maternal half-sister, Julia Baird, at a convention at the Adelphi Hotel.
They agreed to work on a collaborative project, and John Lennon, My Brother was published three years later, with a foreword by Paul McCartney.
Some two decades on, Baird ventured into print again with Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon.
But while Giuliano claimed to recognise some of her revelations as his own discoveries, he decided against legal action.
But with Matt Greenhalgh's screenplay drawing heavily on Baird's solo volume, Giuliano has reportedly instructed his lawyers to secure a 50 per cent share of the picture's earnings.
He said: "Everything that was additional information in Imagine This was uncovered by me in my original research for John Lennon, My Brother."
"I was restricted by Julia from including a lot of very interesting information that I learned in the course of my research, including the relationship between Mimi and Julia Lennon.
"Including the fight over where John would live, because Mimi and other older members of the family were still alive at the time.
"But all that 'new' material was my research, part of the work that Julia Baird and I were 50/50 partners in.
"There’s only one reason she did it, and that's to screw me out of my share."
He now plans to sue — whether the case has any legal merit, only time will tell.
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