"Vanity Fair: Timothée Chalamet Channels Bob Dylan in Debut 'A Complete Unknown' Trailer"

Bob Dylan, or at least the version of him embodied by one Timothée Chalamet, is headed to the big screen. Searchlight Pictures has finally released the first trailer for A Complete Unknown, the biopic about Dylan from Oscar-nominated filmmaker James Mangold, whose film about June Carter and Johnny Cash won Reese Witherspoon an Academy Award.

Chalamet’s Dylan, a character crafted with help from Austin Butler’s Elvis team, is smoking in his signature dark sunglasses, strolling with a guitar case around New York City’s Greenwich Village, and singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” a song recorded for Dylan’s 1963 album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Written by Mangold and Jay Cocks, A Complete Unknown follows a 19-year-old Dylan upon his move to New York in 1961, and culminates in his historic performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Chalamet stars alongside Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, a fictional girlfriend inspired by the musician’s real-life former girlfriend Suze Rotolo; Monica Barbaro as troubadour and activist Joan Baez; Boyd Holbrook as country legend Johnny Cash; and Edward Norton as folk musician Pete Seeger, whose words open the trailer.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Mangold said that during the film’s preproduction process, he “never even planned on meeting Bob, honestly,” adding, “That just came about because he read the script and wanted to see me.” During their initial conversation, Dylan reportedly asked the director to share the project’s synopsis. “I said, ‘It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota, and leaves behind all his friends and family and reinvents himself in a brand-new place, makes new friends, builds a new family, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to choke to death again—and runs away,’” Mangold remembered.

Dylan smiled at his answer, the filmmaker recalled, noting that he said, “I like that.”

Mangold also revealed that the actors’ live vocals will be featured in the movie. “But it’s not [like] if one of our actors hit a bad note, I don’t have an alternative take or the ability to replace that one beat,” he said. “If Timmy’s brave enough to stand out there and make himself vulnerable, throwing himself at this, I should be brave enough to stand behind the camera and shoot.”

As for the performance from Chalamet, whom Mangold said he’s “used to calling Bob sometimes,” the actor “does an incredible job of growing the character up, because one of the things I think that will be startling is, most Dylan fans don’t focus on the boy in the newsboy cap who’s arriving in town.” The director added, “It’s going to be impossible for people in trailers or teasers or photos to see, but the way he grows this character is a real act of acting brilliance in my opinion.”

The film will arrive in theaters this December—just in time for an awards season push. “You can’t release a movie like this in February or March,” Mangold explained. “And then it’s the summer and then you’d go to some festivals or something like that and come out the following fall. But I love the creative momentum of just charging toward an audience, headlong.”