Premiere Date Announced for ‘A Complete Unknown,’ the New Bob Dylan Biopic Starring Timothée Chalamet

It looks like Bob Dylan fans will have a bit more to celebrate during the holiday season this year. A December 25 premiere date has been announced for the highly anticipated Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, which stars Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet in the lead role.

According to a description posted on the Searchlight Pictures website, the film is set “in the influential New York music scene of the early ’60s, [and] follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts.” The summary also notes that the movie culminates in Dylan’s “groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”

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As previously reported, A Complete Unknown was directed and co-written by Oscar-nominated filmmaker James Mangold. Mangold’s credits include Girl, Interrupted, Ford v Ferrari, and the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. The film also features Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Elle Fanning Boyd Holbrook as Cash), and Nick Offerman as folk archivist Alan Lomax. In addition, Elle Fanning portrays Sylvie Russo, a fictional character based partly on Dylan’s early-1960s girlfriend Suze Rotolo.

A Complete Unknown Trailer

A trailer for A Complete Unknown recently debuted and can be viewed on the Searchlight Pictures YouTube channel. The promo features a scene where Norton, portraying Seeger, introduces a young Dylan before the singer/songwriter performs at a small club.

[RELATED: Watch: The First Trailer for Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan Biopic, A Complete Unknown]

“A few months back, my friend Woody Guthrie and I, we met a young man,” Norton as Seeger says. “He dropped in on us out of nowhere and he played us a song. And in that moment, we got a feeling we were getting a glimpse of the future.”

It also includes footage of Chalamet as Dylan singing the classic tune “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

About Chalamet’s Portrayal of Dylan

Chalamet does his own singing in the film. In a January 2024 interview with GQ magazine, the actor revealed that he worked with a dialect coach and a vocal coach to help him better capture Dylan’s singing style and mannerisms. According to Chalamet, the coaches were part of the same team who worked with Austin Butler for the Elvis movie.

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