Timothée Chalamet was announced to be taking on the role of Bob Dylan in 2020. While the 27-year-old actor holds a physical resemblance to the folk icon, whether or not he would sing for the role was left up in the air —until now.
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Director James Mangold recently told Collider that Chalamet would “of course” be singing for the role. Chalamet has flexed his singing chops on a number of projects, including Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York, a yet-to-be-released Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel, and a brief performance on Saturday Night Live.
The film will follow the plot of Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric, documenting the pivotal night at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan decided to adopt rock n’ roll. Other tentpole musicians of the era slated to be portrayed in the film include Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez.
Mangold called the folk movement an “amazing time in American culture”—which is what drew him to create the film in the first place.
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“The story of a young, 19-year-old Bob Dylan coming to New York with like two dollars in his pocket and becoming a worldwide sensation within three years—first being embraced into the family of folk music in New York and then, of course, kind of outrunning them at a certain point as his star rises so beyond belief,” he said. “It’s such an interesting true story and about such an interesting moment in the American scene.”
Dylan’s longtime manager, Jeff Rosen, is reportedly working on the singer-songwriter’s behalf with Searchlight and Mangold.
Mangold’s project is the latest in a long string of movies about Dylan. Past depictions include I’m Not There (2007), No Direction Home (2005), The Other Side of the Mirror (2007), and more.
Dylan is set to play a number of shows this year, including an appearance at the Montreux Folk Festival. Elsewhere he is set to play several dates at the Tokyo Garden Theater, the Campo Pequeno in Lisbon, and the Piazza Napoleone in Lucca, Italy among many other European dates.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
