He’s been in high-demand since his breakout success in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, followed up with Lady Bird, Beautiful Boy, and most recently, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. But the new King of Hollywood is showing no signs of passing on his crown anytime soon.
Timothée Chalamet has a new project in the works, and this one promises to be just as good as the last (and the one before that, and the one before that). The actor has just been cast as music legend Bob Dylan in an upcoming biopic about the singer’s early life, titled Going Electric.
Directed by James Mangold, the brains behind 2005’s Walk the Line about Johnny Cash, the film will chronicle Dylan’s journey from Greenwich Village folk singer to rock god, focusing on his controversial decision to embrace the electric guitar. There are also reports that Dylan himself is involved in the project, which bodes well for Chalamet. Not only does the young actor often seem to channel Dylan in his clothes/hairstyle/general demeanor of brooding artistic genius, but music biopics that involve the musicians themselves – think Brian May’s hand in Bohemian Rhapsody, or Elton John in Rocketman – are having a good run recently.
This isn’t the first time Dylan has been portrayed on the silver screen. In the 2007 musical drama I’m Not There, various versions of the music icon were played by a lineup of actors including Cate Blanchett and the late Heath Ledger. But Going Electric sounds like the closest thing to a conventional biopic of the star we’ve had to date.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2017, Mangold suggested he was keen to make another music-themed movie to follow up on Walk the Line: “There’s been a couple of instances where I’ve actually approached artists,” he said. “The trick is always, are they ready for that kind of treatment? And do you have something original to say? It’s not good enough that they wrote great music or changed music history. You actually absolutely have to have a story.” We’re sure that Dylan’s story won’t disappoint.
In the meantime, the 24-year-old is coming to London to star in Amy Herzog’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play 4000 Miles in April.