A Complete Unknown, from Walk the Line director James Mangold, will show the musician’s rise to worldwide fame in early 60s New York City
We’ve had plenty of music biopics in recent years – but this one feels particularly exciting, not only for Chalamet taking on the central role, but for Mangold holding the reins.
And it’s undeniable that Chalamet has the Dylan look down here, and the voice is sounding strong too. The film will follow the young Dylan as he rises to fame, leaving Minnesota and arriving in the big city with a hatful of dreams – rapidly becoming one of the greatest musicians of all time.
Elle Fanning is thought to be playing a fictional amalgamation of Dylan’s early romances, with Edward Norton as legendary folk musician Pete Seeger.
The Dune and Call Me by Your Name star has transformed into the legendary musician for an awards-aiming drama to be released in the US in December and in the UK in January.
It comes from the film-maker James Mangold, who previously directed the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
It starts in New York City when Dylan arrives in 1961 and ends 72 hours after the Newport folk festival in 1965.
The film will include the actors singing, with the Top Gun: Maverick star Monica Barbaro playing Joan Baez, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.
Elle Fanning also stars as Suze Rotolo, the artist who had a major influence on Dylan during that period. Mangold has called it “a strong ensemble piece”.
As Chalamet performs as Dylan, the film shows glimpses of the musician’s performances, travels around New York City and first glimpses at costars Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro, the latter of whom plays Dylan’s girlfriend Joan Baez.
The trailer ends with Dylan finishing performing a song for Seeger and his family, with one of Seeger’s daughters amusingly telling the soon-to-be famous musician his song is a “good start.”
After picking up some decent credits in TV and movies in Homeland and Interstellar, New York-born French-American actor Timothée Chalamet broke through as the lead in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name.
He won an Oscar nod for that performance, and followed it up with turns in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Little Women, before taking the big screen by storm as Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies and as Willy Wonka in 2023’s Wonka reimagining.
Bob Dylan is simply one of the most important figures in popular music, who burst onto the scene in the early 1960s as a folkie, before conquering the world of pop, rock and much more, and becoming the only musician to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.