Steven Soderbergh Was ‘Surprised’ How ‘Open and Excited’ John Lennon Was in Final Interview on the Day He Died

John Lennon’s final day including a recording session, a photo shoot and a radio interview — and a new documentary from Steven Soderbergh is ready to shed light on the late musician’s last chat.

Soderbergh, 62, opened up to Variety about his forthcoming documentary, which focuses on the RKO Radio interview Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono did on Dec. 8, 1980, the day the ex-Beatle was shot and killed outside the Dakota, his New York City apartment building.

“I’m excited about it… The job is to obviously present it in such a way that it enhances the interview and doesn’t distract from it,” he said. “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 Erin Brokovich director added that Lennon and Ono “were both so free in their discussions,” the topics of which ranged from music and politics to the future.

“I was surprised at how open and excited they were to talk,” Soderbergh said. “You would think they had never been interviewed before. So I want that to come across to the audience. Everything that they said 45 years ago is not just relevant today. It’s even more relevant in terms of relationships, politics, how we treat each other. How systems work on the individual and above all on the importance of love in our daily life and our world.”

Lennon and Ono had released the album Double Fantasy just weeks earlier, and they granted just one radio interview to promote the record. The chat with RKO’s Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye took place over three-and-a-half hours at the Dakota.

“He had arrived at the Dakota somewhere around noon. The visual of John opening up the door, literally jumping up, leaping into the room and extending his arms like, ‘Hey folks, I’m here!’” Sholin recalled on 20/20 in 2020. “He had just turned 40. As he said, this was like he was opening up a new chapter. That was the mood of the day, and he could not have been more upbeat.”

Kaye added that the “Imagine” singer, who had spent much of the past few years raising his then-5-year-old son Sean, was “just happy.”

“Happy to be alive and happy to think of the years that he had ahead of him with Sean and making music and with Yoko,” she said. “It was bubbling up from him, it was beautiful.”

Lennon’s final day has been widely covered. In addition to the interview, he was also photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the cover of Rolling Stone, and spent time in the studio recording what would become Ono’s 1981 single “Walking on Thin Ice.”

“They were both just so happy,’ producer Jack Douglas, who spent time in the studio with Lennon on the day he died, told PEOPLE in 2023. “He didn’t think we were going to set the world on fire with [Double Fantasy]. But it didn’t matter to him. He just wanted to tell the truth about where he was in his life at 40 years old. And he felt really good about it.”

Soderbergh said his film is almost complete, but does not yet have a title or release date. It marks the director’s first documentary since 2010.