Film to explore the mind of Lennon's killer

Jared Leto & Lindsay Lohan

Leto, who played a heroin addict in Requiem for a Dream and a cocaine-snorting arms dealer in Lord of War, has signed on to portray Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, in the upcoming independent film Chapter 27.

Lohan, the teenage Mean Girls star last seen in Herbie: Fully Loaded, will play a fictional Lennon fan who befriends Chapman during the weekend he kills the musician outside his Manhattan apartment building.

The parts of Lennon and wife Yoko Ono have not been cast yet.

Peace Arch Entertainment President John Flock, whose Toronto-based company is financing the picture, said the character of Lennon himself would get relatively little screen time as the movie focuses on Chapman in the days leading up to the murder.

Chapman, currently serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life, shot Lennon to death outside the Dakota apartment building on December 8, 1980, hours after getting the former Beatle to autograph a copy of his newly released comeback album Double Fantasy.

Flock said the title of the film, Chapter 27, is a reference to the 26 chapters in the JD Salinger coming-of-age novel The Catcher in the Rye, which Chapman cited as his inspiration for the murder. Chapman has said he identified with the book's hero, who hated phonies, and gunned Lennon down because he thought him a hypocrite.

Production on the film, the brainchild of first-time writer and director Jarrett Schaeffer, is set to begin January 16 2006 in New York, with producers aiming for a commercial release late next year, Flock said.