Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan Movie Just Got A Great Co-Star

Elle Fanning will join Timothee Chalament in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

By Chris Snellgrove | Updated

Even though Dune: Part Two looks cool as hell, there is another upcoming Timothee Chalamet film that has all of Hollywood buzzing. He is set to star in A Complete Unknown, a biopic that gives the treatment Elvis recently received to his fellow musician Bob Dylan. Now, we have even more reason to be excited about this film: we already knew Chalamet would be playing a young Dylan, and now Deadline reports that he will be joined by Elle Fanning, best known for the excellent Hulu show The Great.

While we still don’t know much about A Complete Unknown, it looks like the film isn’t going to span a very long period of Bob Dylan’s life. Instead, Timothee Chalamet will be playing Dylan during the summer in which the quirky musician had to master using an electric guitar for the first time, and Elle Fanning plays Sylvie Russo, an artist and college student the young Dylan falls in love with.

While biopics typically take quite a few creative liberties with their subjects, the fact that the actual Bob Dylan is a producer on this film means that we are likely to get a story that is about as accurate as we could hope for.

Even though we’d probably watch stars like Timothee Chalamet and Elle Fanning read a phone book, we are actually even more excited about the talent behind the camera. A Complete Unknown is being directed by James Mangold, who brought us Logan, the best Wolverine story of them all.

Mangold is currently getting prepared to release Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this summer, and we’re excited to see how a director often known for his bombastic action blockbusters will handle a quiet story about this famous musician’s life.

Speaking of blockbusters, Timothee Chalamet’s involvement in the Dune movies has led to his Dylan film getting buzz, but we may even be more excited with the casting of Elle Fanning. The actor has recently been headlining the wicked satire The Great on Hulu, and she has a string of killer performances in films such as Bablyon, Super 8, and Maleficent (back when Disney tried to at least do something different with their live-action adaptations).

maleficent elle fanning
Elle Fanning in Maleficent (2014)

Many consider her performance in The Great to be a career high, and that performance has garnered her nominations for Golden Globes, a Primetime Emmy, a SAG award, and more.

At this juncture, you can color us “cautiously optimistic” for this upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, especially because the musician himself is a producer who wants the film to be both accurate and moving. Additionally, James Mangold is a director who has delivered some killer movies before, and even though some early audiences have found Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny boring, we’re confident that he will handle this much quieter tale about a legendary musician with both style and grace. Plus, with rising stars like Timothee Chalamet and Elle Fanning at the heart of the film, we think this ensemble is destined to make beautiful music together.