If you follow any and/or all platforms for Timothée Chalamet news—your friends at Esquire, Club Chalamet, Timmy’s socials—you know that he’s starring in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, titled A Complete Unknown. After the release of a barrage of set photos featuring Chalamet in Dylan-esque Wayfarers and shirt jackets, A Complete Unknown’s first trailer is finally here.
Oh, did you think we’d have to wait a few months to see if Chalamet could pull off Dylan’s vocals? Nope. Chalamet-Dylan takes the stage a mere thirty seconds into the preview, brandishing a nearly pitch-perfect rendition of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” The trailer opens with Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) building up the mythos of the young Dylan, followed by a few glimpses of Dylan onstage, harmonica in tow. We also see Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo, who is his romantic interest in the film. (According to Fanning, Russo is “roughly based off” the artist’s ex-girlfriend Suze Rotolo.) For now, though, let’s all just appreciate that Chalamet’s prep for his Dylan transformation—more on that below—paid off. You can watch the first trailer for A Complete Unknown above.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s James Mangold directed Chalamet in the film, which will debut this December. And for those of you who are wondering, it will highlight Dylan's choice to perform an all-electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. If you’re not familiar with the historic and controversial set, know that his folk songs were celebrated as representation for the downtrodden. (See: “The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”) So when Dylan unleashed his all-electric performance of “Like a Rolling Stone” at the famous event, many music figures saw it as a major betrayal. As you can guess by the trailer, Chalamet will take on all of the film’s singing duties, as opposed to those in Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody, which had the help of voice-blending technology.
Mangold is something of an expert in the music-legend biopic, having also directed 2005’s Johnny Cash film, Walk the Line. “Timmy is working his ass off right as we speak,” Mangold said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023. “I couldn’t have more confidence in him and in all the others joining in. Not unlike making an Indiana Jones movie, the expectations are high, but so is the camaraderie and the love among us. We’ve all been essentially working on this movie for the last three years. So there’s been a lot of preparation. When Covid took us offline, no one stopped. Writing, rehearsing, Timmy playing guitar and working. Probably took it with him through every Dune, and probably was playing guitar as he was riding a worm.”
Guitar playing and worm riding? At the same time? Now, that I have to see.
