Everything we know about Bob Dylan biopic 'A Complete Unknown' (2024)

Next year should be the year that we’re finally treated to a narrative film exploring the life of one of popular culture’s most iconic figures. In 2025, the Bob Dylan biopic arrives.

A Complete Unknown will star Timothée Chalamet as the man himself, with James Mangold directing. Taking its name from a lyric in Dylan’s most celebrated song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ the work should chart his rise to prominence and the most definitive period of his career.

While this subject isn’t completely unchartered territory for cinema, it will be the first time it’s been dramatised in this way. Compared to the countless Beatles biopics, pastiches and parodies, Dylan’s life has largely been left alone by filmmakers.

The lack of Dylan biopics already out there in part relates to the veil of mystery in which he shrouds himself. And it’s partly due to how challenging the real-life material is to work with. Bob Dylan is known for constantly reinventing himself, carrying off public personas of various guises, and deliberately obstructing attempts to delve into his personal life.

Nevertheless, Mangold and Chalamet have taken up the mantle of telling his story. So here’s everything we know so far about the film A Complete Unknown.

Is this the first time we see Bob Dylan in a movie?

Although there is no definitive Bob Dylan biopic out there, we have seen him on the big screen a fair few times before.

Real-life Bob starred in two acclaimed documentaries by DA Pennebaker, following his period of transition from acoustic folk to electric folk-rock during two live tours in 1965 and 1966. Don’t Look Back was released in 1967, and its sequel, Eat the Document, followed in 1972.

Then there are Martin Scorsese’s two more recent documentary efforts, which were made with the active participation of the artist himself. Dylan was interviewed for No Direction Home, which also draws on footage from Pennebaker’s films, while Rolling Thunder Revue uses footage from his 1975-76 tour. The latter film is currently available to watch on Netflix.

Dylan himself wrote and directed the experimental 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, based on the filming he did during his 1975-76 Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

The only previous fictionalised dramatisation of Dylan’s life of any repute was Todd Haynes’ 2007 film I’m Not There. However, with its non-linear, experimental narrative involving six different actors each playing completely different versions of Dylan (effectively different characters), it can hardly be considered a biopic.

And a fictional Dylan made a brief cameo appearance at the end of the Coen Brothers’ 2013 movie Inside Llewyn Davis. The film is based on the life of his Greenwich Village folk scene contemporary Dave van Ronk.

Who else is in the cast of A Complete Unknown?

In addition to Chalamet in the lead role, A Complete Unknown will star Top Gun: Maverick’s Monica Barbaro as Dylan’s fellow folk singer and love interest Joan Baez. The Great actor Elle Fanning will feature as his first girlfriend, Suze Rotolo (under the pseudonym Sylvie Russo), and seasoned Walking Dead star Dan Fogler will play Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman.

There’ll be appearances from Scoot McNairy and Edward Norton, too. As legendary folk singers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, respectively.

What does Timothée Chalamet look like as Bob Dylan?

The first pictures of Chalamet’s physical appearance as Dylan were released in March. It shows the actor wearing garb Dylan would have donned around the time his self-titled debut album was released in 1962.

There’s the unbuttoned flat cap he wears on the album’s cover, a grey jacket, nubuck leather boots, and matching brown scarf, knapsack and fingerless gloves. Chalamet’s Dylan is seen carrying his guitar case around what appears to be a road into New York.

Two snaps of the actor in this getup are all we know about his appearance as Dylan so far. However, we do know that Chalamet researched Dylan obsessively throughout the pandemic and has been perfecting the singer’s accent and intonation with a voice coach

Which Bob Dylan does the movie’s plot focus on?

From the list of characters, early still photos which have been released, and studio press releases so far, we know that the film will chart Dylan’s life and career roughly from 1961 to 1965.

The narrative will likely begin with Robert Zimmerman (Dylan’s real name) arriving in New York as a teenager in 1961, in search of his hero Woody Guthrie. And it could climax with Dylan turning to electric folk-blues music, abandoning the acoustic sound of his protest songs, in 1965.

There hasn’t yet been confirmation that versions of artist Andy Warhol or his superstar and romantic interest for Dylan Edie Sedgwick will appear in the movie. This suggests that it could end in mid-1965, with the shocking moment of Dylan and his band “plugging in” at the Newport Folk Festival, and just before his period of heavy drug-taking and surrealist lyricism.

The film’s direct source material, Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, suggests as much. Since it too climaxes in tension between Dylan and folk purist Pete Seeger boiling over at Newport in July 1965.

Who is James Mangold?

A Complete Unknown’s director James Mangold is best-known for directing dazzling, action-packed but emotionally lightweight pictures, such as Ford v Ferrari, X-Men’s The Wolverine and Logan, and the latest instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise.

However, earlier in his career, he made his name directing successful films in a variety of genres, from the neo-noir Cop Land and the psychological thriller Girl, Interrupted, to the mystery film Identity and the western 3:10 to Yuma.

Perhaps more importantly, he did a pretty good job with Walk the Line, the biopic of country singer Johnny Cash, who was Dylan’s contemporary and friend. Cash even appears as a minor character in A Complete Unknown.

It’s to be hoped that Mangold draws on his experience to do the complex and nuanced subject matter of Dylan’s early career transformation justice.

Has Bob Dylan signed off on the film?

The answer to this question is, surprisingly, an emphatic yes. James Mangold told the Happy Sad Confused podcastlast year that he’d spent a lot of time talking with Dylan personally, one-on-one.

Not only has Dylan approved the film. Mangold has “a script that’s personally annotated by him and treasured by me.” The artist is very much involved in this telling of his story, then.

Apparently, Mangold convinced him to give the project a green light by explaining that the film isn’t actually a Bob Dylan biopic. Well, as long as you’ve convinced him, James. Let’s see what type of non-biopic it turns out to be.

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