Timothée Chalamet is in talks to play legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in a film from Logan director James Mangold. Chalamet may only be a young man, but he’s already made a big impact in Hollywood, including garnering an Oscar nomination for his work in the drama Call Me By Your Name.
With that Oscar nomination in his back pocket, Chalamet has continued building his resume with roles in everything from the drama Beautiful Boy, in which he played real life drug addict Nic Sheff, to the current period film Little Women in which he portrays classic literary heartthrob Theodore "Laurie" Laurence. In addition to those relatively small films, Chalamet has also signed on for a big-budget experience, taking on the lead role of Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Chalamet will also follow in the footsteps of many a beloved performer by taking a trip to Wes Anderson’s universe, signing on for a role in the director’s upcoming comedy-drama The French Dispatch.
Now, Chalamet may take on perhaps his most challenging role to date, as he's in talks to play Dylan in Ford v. Ferrari director Mangold’s film unofficially titled Going Electric (via Deadline). As the title suggests, the movie will cover the much-discussed period of Dylan’s career where he transitioned from his early Woody Guthrie-style folk troubadour stage into playing electric guitar fueled rock and roll, a move that enraged many of the singer's long time fans while helping propel him on the road to musical immortality.
Reportedly, Chalamet is already taking guitar lessons to help him more accurately portray the musical icon Dylan, who indeed remains a vital force in music to this day (even though he hasn’t released an album of original songs since 2012’s Tempest, preferring instead to concentrate on recording American standards from the likes of Frank Sinatra). Dylan himself of course has taken stabs at performing in movies, most notably in Sam Peckinpah’s classic Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and also directed his own film Renaldo and Clara, a notoriously strange movie built around concert footage from his legendary 1970s tour The Rolling Thunder Revue. Indeed, that classic tour found its way back into the public consciousness last year when Martin Scorsese and Netflix released Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, a somewhat fictionalized account of the performer’s exploits.
When it comes to prior fully fictional accounts of Dylan’s life on film, the most notable example has to be 2007’s I’m Not There, in which multiple actors including Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger portrayed Dylan at different points in his career. Chalamet’s role in fact will see him playing Dylan during roughly the same stage as that depicted by Blanchett in I’m Not There, which should lead to some interesting comparisons. Given the success of recent musical biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, it’s perhaps no shock that Logan director Mangold is now turning to Dylan’s ever-fascinating life as subject matter for yet another biographical movie about a famous musician.
Source: Deadline
