Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan revealed in A Complete Unknown biopic

Filmmaker James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown just dropped its first trailer, giving the world the first proper look at Timothee Chalamet as the music icon.

The film will chart Dylan’s story from when he arrives in New York City in 1961 as an unknown artists gigging around the Village to 1965, in the days after the Newport folk festival where he controversially plugged in an electric guitar and embraced a more rock-and-roll sound.

The trailer starts with a voiceover from Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, who says, “I want to tell you a little story. A few months back, my friend Woody Guthrie and I, we met a young man. He dropped in on us out of nowehere and he played us a song and in that moment we got a feeling that we were getting a glimpse into the future”.

It then transitions into Chalamet performing Dylan classic A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.

And it is Chalamet doing his own singing in the film. He told GQ last year that he worked with the team who coached his Dune 2 co-star Austin Butler for his Elvis performance, including dialect coach Tim Monich, vocal coach Eric Vetro and movement coach Polly Bennett.

“I just saw the way (Bulter) committed to it all – and realised I needed to step it up,” he said.

Vetro told GQ that it was less about Chalamet doing an impersonation of Dylan’s voice and more about “taking on all the characteristics of Dylan’s voice and his mannerism and his speech patterns, and bringing that into the music – so that when you hear Timothee do the music, what you’re really getting is the essence of Bob Dylan.”

A Complete Unknown will feature many icons of the folk scene and Dylan’s contemporaries, including Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, P.J. Byrne as Harold Leventhal, Scott McNairy as Woody Guthrie, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman and Will Harrison as Bob Neuwirth.

The film is set to be an Oscars and award-season contender.

Mangold had previously directed Walk the Line, the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic which was nominated for five Oscars including for lead stars Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, with Witherspoon winning.

He has also made films including Ford v Ferrari, Logan, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Girl Interrupted and 3:10 to Yuma.

Chalamet also stretched his pipes for Wonka, the musical prequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Between Wonka and Dune 2, Chalamet has been one of the most bankable stars of the past 12 months.

Chalamet is not the first actor to play Bob Dylan. In Todd Haynes’ 2007 film I’m Not There, six stars portrayed Dylan at different points of his life, including Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere and Ben Whishaw.