Timothée Chalamet to play Bob Dylan in biopic focusing on the icon's shift from folk to rock music
Timothée Chalamet, one of the hottest young talents in Hollywood at present, will be portraying renowned music legend, Bob Dylan, in a new drama set to be directed by James Mangold and fans have been celebrating the match made in heaven on social media.
The new Searchlight Pictures film will follow Dylan as he rises in fame and popularity on his way to becoming a beloved folk music icon in America.
It is expected to be set in the 1960s time period, and include the famous incident when the seminal singer made his much-publicized shift away from folk music to rock n' roll music, often known as the "Dylan goes Electric at the Newport Festival" debacle.
According to a report by Deadline, director James Mangold, best known for helming the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic 'Walk The Line' in 2005 and the recent car-racing drama, 'Ford V. Ferrari' in 2019, has been confirmed as the director of the new Bob Dylan feature in 2020.
Timothée Chalamet, who will be playing the young troubadour when he first burst onto the music scene in the early 1960s, is already set for an extremely busy year. He recently starred as Laurie in Greta Gerwig's 'Little Women' adaptation and has appeared in Netflix’s historical drama 'The King' as well.
Chalamet will also be the centerpiece lead of Denis Villeneuve’s star-packed 'Dune' reboot in 2020, and is even slated to appear in the new forthcoming Wes Anderson project called 'The French Dispatch'.
Bob Dylan was fondly celebrated more than half a century ago as the "spokesman of a generation" and for playing American people's music (folk music) for the musical-yarn-loving folk back then.
He was a legendary poet and wandering minstrel who captured the heart of the American zeitgeist during the 1960s with his honest, homespun lyrics and simplistic guitar-playing style.
Dylan is said to be actively collaborating with Searchlight and Mangold on the film as an advisor.
Searchlight Pictures have said the new project is still untitled, but it is said to have been touted around Hollywood as the 'Going Electric' project, presumably a reference to Bob Dylan's ill-fated appearance at the traditionally acoustic Newport Folk Festival.
In 1965, Dylan, then the world's most popular folk singer, traded his acoustic guitar in for an electric guitar and was roundly booed by the crowd for abandoning his politically-charged musical roots for what had been dubbed the "latest craze" of the time — electric guitar music, which was then being popularized by people like Chuck Berry and the Beatles.
While Dylan's rock music crossover created a huge outcry and furor, his embracing of a raw musical genre that was still in its infancy at the time helped catapult rock music to the forefront of popular culture and helped define a new musical era for future generations to come.
