Timothée Chalamet Will Play Bob Dylan in New Biopic
Timothée Chalamet is in talks to play Bob Dylan in an upcoming film.
The movie will be directed by Walk the Line and Logan director James Mangold.
The movie is said to be about Dylan's 1965 transition from acoustic to electric.
With the last two years of awards and box office successes for both a biopic focused on Queen—Bohemian Rhapsody—and a biopic focused on Elton John—Rocketman—it looks like the 'musical origin story' is becoming an ever-popular genre. That pattern looks to be continuing in the near future, as Deadline is reporting that Timothée Chalamet is in talks to play Bob Dylan in an upcoming film currently being called Going Electric.
Going Electric is said to focus on Dylan's 1965 transition from the acoustic folk that made him famous to a more traditional guitar-and-amp rock and roll. The movie will be directed by James Mangold, who was behind last year's Ford v Ferrari. It's not clear whether or not Chalamet will do the singing as Dylan in the movie (Rami Malek lipsynced in Rhapsody, but Taron Egerton did his own vocals in Rocketman) but the Deadline report says that he's already been taking lessons to get up to speed on both acoustic and electric guitar.
Chalamet has been one of the industry's most exciting young stars since 2017, when he earned an Oscar nomination for his role in Call Me By Your Name and had a memorable supporting turn in Greta Gerwig's early-2000s period piece, Lady Bird. You can see him currently on Netflix in The King or in theaters as Laurie in Gerwig's excellent adaptation of Little Women.
2020 is shaping up to possibly be Chalamet's biggest year yet—he's set to appear in Wes Anderson's new movie The French Dispatch, and will be leading the star-studded Dune reboot alongside Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, and Stellan Skarsgård.
Mangold is one of the most underrated directors in the industry, having shown a talent over the past two decades for making films in a wide range of genres. In addition to Ford v Ferrari, he's also made great superhero movies (Logan), Westerns (3:10 to Yuma), popcorn blockbusters (Knight and Day), Dramas (Girl, Interrupted) and even slasher mysteries (Identity). He's also notably been down the musical biopic road before to great success, having helmed Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash biopic that starred Joaquin Phoenix (and earned Reese Witherspoon an Oscar).
Folk music isn't the most common subject for a movie, but it does tend to work. Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born was one of last year's best movies, and Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the best Coen Brothers movies (and served as a breakout role for Oscar Isaac). Dylan's life and music have been at the center of a film before, in 2007's I'm Not Here, which saw six different actors, including Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, play versions of the singer-songwriter.
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