Timothee Chalamet's Bob Dylan Biopic - Cast, Director, And More Info
There may not be a more daunting artist from the twentieth century (and beyond) to grapple with in any form than Bob Dylan. The folk music legend is regarded by many as the most influential songwriter of the last 60-plus years, and, at the age of 82, is just as relevant today as he was in his rebellious young adulthood. He pricked the nation's conscience in the early 1960s with classic protest anthems like "The Times They Are a-Changin'," "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," inspiring many a teenager and twentysomething to pick up an acoustic guitar and sing their truth. Then, in what his folkie colleagues/admirers took as a betrayal, he went electric. This would be the first of many confounding transformations. In a way, he kept throwing fans off the scent of the big "Who is Bob Dylan?" question by, every few years, getting them to ask "Who is Bob Dylan now?"
The essential inscrutability of Bob Dylan has been the subject of many a film, whether the musician is existing as himself in a documentary or acting in a fiction feature. Jason Robards' title lawman puts the question to Dylan's mysterious Alias as directly as possible in Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid": "Who are you?" "That's a good question," replies Alias.
It isn't necessary to know Bob Dylan the human being to be moved by his music, but people keep probing. What exactly are they hoping to find out about this Minnesota-born Jewish kid who dropped out of college, moved to Greenwich Village, and changed the world? That might be the more interesting question, especially when filmmakers of D.A. Pennabaker, Martin Scorsese, and Todd Haynes are doing the interrogating. James Mangold will be the next major director to ponder this enigma with "A Complete Unknown." We know Timothée Chalamet is set to play Dylan, but who else is involved and what do you need to know while we wait for this biopic to hit theaters? Those are comparatively easier questions to answer.
When does A Complete Unknown premiere?
James Mangold began shooting the film on March 16, 2024, so this depends on how fast he can work. Do not expect him to be in a rush. His last pre-Covid production, "Ford v Ferrari," hit theaters over a year after Mangold commenced principal photography.
You can, however, be sure that, given the cultural magnitude of the movie's subject, this is a film that will get a splashy film festival berth whenever it's ready. It's a Fox Searchlight production, so the safest bet is a global premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, or maybe the New York Film Festival. So expect the hoped-for critical raves to start showering down no earlier than late August 2025, and a theatrical release at some point in the fall of that year.
What are the plot details of A Complete Unknown?
Mangold's film is based on "Dylan Goes Electric," a biography by Ellis Wald that charts Dylan's meteoric rise to fame from his Minnesota childhood to the Greenwich Village folk music scene of the early 1960s to his controversial decision to fuse the genre's acoustic sound with a rock-and-roll edge at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. There is no official indication that Mangold plans to examine Dylan's life in full, so let's just assume for now that this will deal with the artist's mentoring at the feet of the then ailing folk great Woody Guthrie, and shocking aesthetic "betrayal" that prompted Pete Seeger to allegedly take an axe to Dylan's amplifier wires (he denied this happened when I interviewed him in 2007).
Also factoring into the story will be Dylan's four-year relationship with artist Suze Rotolo (who's strolling down Jones Street in the Village with Dylan on the famous album cover of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan). His affair with Joan Baez will be touched on as well.
Who is the cast of A Complete Unknown?
Unsurprisingly, Mangold has assembled a first-rate cast for this hotly anticipated biopic. Rising star Monica Barbaro ("Top Gun: Maverick") will play folk giant Joan Baez, while Elle Fanning will play Sylvie Russo (an apparent composite character who's pretty clearly a stand-in for Suze Rotolo).
No one has been cast (or announced) as Guthrie, but Nick Offerman will co-star as folklorist Alan Lomax, who discovered not just Guthrie, but brought blues masters like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters to prominence. Boyd Holbrook, hot off the one-two hissable villain combo of Clement Mansell in "Justified: City Primeval" and Klaber in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," has been cast as country music titan Johnny Cash, while Edward Norton will go a-cord-choppin' as Pete Seeger (the part previously belonged to Benedict Cumberbatch, but scheduling conflicts forced him to drop out).
Who is the director of A Complete Unknown?
James Mangold has long been a difficult filmmaker to pin down. He made his feature debut with the quietly heartbreaking indie "Heavy" in 1995" before tackling the ambitious police corruption drama "Copland." He's directed Angelina Jolie and Reese Witherspoon to, respectively, Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress Oscars for "Girl, Interrupted" and "Walk the Line," and, along with Scott Frank and Michael Green, was one of the first screenwriters to receive an Academy Award nomination for a live-action superhero movie for "Logan."
Mangold proved his biopic chops with "Ford v Ferrari" in 2019, and you could certainly argue that there's something as quintessentially American about auto racing as folk music. All that matters is that he's an accomplished director who knows how to tell a compelling real-life story. I'm looking forward to whatever he does with this material.
Who are the writers and producers of A Complete Unknown?
Kenyon College graduate Jay Cocks is currently sharing screenwriting credit with Mangold (these things can change during the Writers Guild of America arbitration process, but it sounds like Cocks did the main pass with revisions by Mangold). Cocks is a former film critic whose collaborations as a writer with friend Martin Scorsese have earned him two Academy Award nominations (for "The Age of Innocence" and "Gangs of New York"). He received the National Board of Review's Best Screenplay award for Scorsese's "Silence," and teamed with James Cameron to write Kathryn Bigelow's crazy underrated sci-fi flick "Strange Days."
And we wouldn't have the opening crawl of "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope" as it exists today had Cocks and pal Brian De Palma not convinced George Lucas to cut the laborious backstory and explain only what had happened immediately prior to the start of the movie.
It's worth noting that Mangold consulted with Dylan on the writing of "A Complete Unknown," but he's also said that the film will play as something of a Robert Altman ensemble flick. Hopefully, this isn't just Dylan's version of events.
There are currently seven producers attached to "A Complete Unknown:" Mangold, Alex Heineman, Fred Berger ("La La Land"), Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Peter Jaysen, and, most notably, Dylan's manager Jeff Rosen.
Has A Complete Unknown released a trailer?
The film just started shooting last weekend, so no trailer just yet. But while we'll have to wait a bit to hear if Chalamet sounds like a young Dylan, we do have some first looks from the set (Twitter embeds are below). I have zero interest in speculating as to the eventually quality of "A Complete Unknown" based on the recently leaked set images, but Chalamet basically looks the part. Close enough, at least. Whether he can locate the soul of this enigma is something we won't know probably until next year.
more pics of Timothée Chalamet as young Bob Dylan on ACU set are coming and they are BEAUTIFUL 🥹 pic.twitter.com/C0LV3mdYMo
— musetta-timothée-chalamet-daily (@Musetta_May) March 17, 2024
Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold on the set of the Bob Dylan biopic 'A COMPLETE UNKNOWN' https://t.co/zz2a36fQBs
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) March 17, 2024
What to watch before seeing A Complete Unknown
Start with D.A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back," a crackling documentary about Dylan's 1965 tour of England, then move on to Martin Scorsese's wide-ranging 2005 doc "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan." If you're at all interested in understanding Dylan, these are the must-sees.
As for biopics, Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" is a lively, experimental consideration of Dylan throughout the years. Here you'll get to see actors as different as Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and, yes, Cate Blanchett play the many artistic iterations of Dylan.
If you want to see Dylan act, you can do no better than Sam Peckinpah's revisionist Western "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid." If you want to see why he doesn't act more often (unless he's explicitly playing himself), feast your eyes on the accursed wretchedness of Richard Marquand's 1987 flop "Hearts of Fire" or Larry Charles' unwatchable "Masked and Anonymous" (where he's basically playing himself).
Where to watch these Bob Dylan related films?
"Don't Look Back" is available to stream for free on Prime Video, Roku, Tubi, Vix and Filmzie.
"No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" can be rented at Prime Video and AppleTV.
"I'm Not There" is streaming at The Criterion Channel, kanopy, Tubi, Vudu, Freevee, Plex, The CW and hoopla.
"Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" is rentable at Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, YouTube and Vudu.
"Hearts of Fire" was difficult to track down for years, but can now be rented at AppleTV, Prime Video and Vudu.
"Masked and Anonymous" is waiting to assail your senses at Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, YouTube and Vudu.