EXCLUSIVE: John Lennon's 'Real' Final Words to Be Revealed in New Film — Including Beatles Icon's Eerie 'Death Prediction' Hours Before He Was Shot
John Lennon's final moments are under the spotlight in a new documentary.
Dec. 2 2025, Published 3:45 p.m. ET
John Lennon's "real" final words are set to be examined in filmmaker Steven Soderbergh's new documentary, built around the lengthy interview the tragic Beatles icon and his wife, Yoko Ono, gave on the afternoon before the singer was shot dead outside the Dakota building in New York.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the yet-untitled film focuses on the couple's RKO Radio conversation on 8 December 1980, recorded just hours before Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman.
What Did Lennon Say Before His Death?
Lennon's 'real' final words will be look into in a new documentary.
The interview was part of a press push for Double Fantasy, Lennon's first album in five years at the time. Though the singer also sat for nine hours with Rolling Stone on 5 December, the RKO recording captured the last sustained reflections Lennon intended the world to hear – rather than his shock-filled utterance that followed his shooting later that night.
Soderbergh said: "I'm not looking to re-invent the form (of documentary.) I'm just hoping to create a film that gets as many people as possible to hear what John and Yoko had to say on that afternoon before he was killed."
The filmmaker, 62, added about the RKO recording: "They were both so free in their discussions. As someone who has been interviewed many times, I was surprised at how open and excited they were to talk. You would think they had never been interviewed before."
'My Work Won't Be Finished Until I'm Dead...'
The Beatles notable made it clear he didn't want to died for a 'long, long time.'
The documentary will incorporate one of Lennon's eeriest remarks, spoken to producer Laurie Kaye earlier that day.
"My work won't be finished," the iconic singer said, adding, "until I'm dead and buried, and I hope that's a long, long time."
A source close to the project said, "Hearing John say that, when knowing what happened hours later, is devastating. Those really were his final thoughts as he understood them – not something blurted out in panic, but what he genuinely believed."
Kaye had been interviewing the couple when she encountered a man she described as a pushy, distracted fan outside the building. That man was Chapman, who first asked Lennon for an autograph and later returned to wait for him before snuffing out his life.
'I'm Shot'
Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman.
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When Lennon entered the Dakota with Ono the evening of his murder, Chapman fired five bullets at the 40-year-old. In the Apple TV+ series John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, Kaye recounts how she had ignored Chapman earlier that day.
Jay Hastings, the Dakota concierge, remembered Lennon stumbling past him after the shots rang out, saying, "I'm shot," before collapsing. His immediate words now sound "almost impossibly sad" when set against the clarity and optimism of the afternoon interview, a source close to Soderbergh's project said.
Soderbergh added the themes Lennon and Ono discussed with RKO – politics, feminism, and the power of positive thought – have become newly potent.
Chapman has been denied parole several times.
"(Their interview is) even more relevant in terms of relationships, politics, how we treat each other," he said. "How systems work on the individual and above all on the importance of love in our daily life and our world."
Chapman pleaded guilty without standing trial after Lennon's murder, claiming at various times God instructed him after he was inspired to shoot by the protagonist of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
Soderbergh's film, his first documentary since And Everything Is Going Fine in 2010, will also highlight the impact of Lennon's killing on Ono, now 92, including accounts from DJ Elliot Mintz about her distress as crowds gathered outside the Dakota singing Lennon's songs in the days after the slaughter.
