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Will ‘A Complete Unknown’ Spur a Bob Dylan Biopic Boom? × Skip to main content Billboard Market Watch Music Industry Events Calendar Pro Charts LOGIN Login Click to Expand Search Input Account Manage Account Log Out Account Open menu Search Click to Expand Search Input Billboard Billboard Search Click to Expand Search Input LOGIN Login Account Manage Account Log Out Account Search Click to Expand Search Input Market Watch Music Industry Events Calendar Pro Charts Open menu Search Click to Expand Search Input Billboard Billboard Search Click to Expand Search Input LOGIN Login Account Manage Account Log Out Account Search Click to Expand Search Input Market Watch Music Industry Events Calendar Pro Charts Trending Topics ► Top Industry Stories of 2024 Top Business Managers Legal and Trial News Will ‘A Complete Unknown’ Spur a Bob Dylan-Led Biopic Boom … Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Fund To De-List From Amsterdam … Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota’s New Year’s Memo to Staff Touts Ne … Business News 01/2/2025 Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Share on Pinterest + additional share options added Share on Reddit Share on LinkedIn Share on Whats App Send an Email Print this article Post a Comment Share on Tumblr Will ‘A Complete Unknown’ Spur a Bob Dylan-Led Biopic Boom? The new movie brings one of rock’s most compelling artists to the big screen — and shows how parts of old stories could become great new films. Let’s have more of them. By Robert Levine Robert Levine More Stories by PRS Breaks the Billion-Pound Barrier as Revenue Rises 12% Swedish CMO Revenue Up 14.2% in 2023 Berliner Philharmoniker Brings the Annual Europakonzert to Georgia View All Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Share on Pinterest + additional share options added Share on Reddit Share on LinkedIn Share on Whats App Send an Email Print this article Post a Comment Share on Tumblr A Complete Unknown Courtesy Photos Classic rock is still big — it’s the pictures that are getting smaller. The definitive modern pop music documentary was Beatles Anthology , the 1995 multi-night television project released with three CD sets of band outtakes and a coffee table book. More recent years brought Ron Howard ’s 2016 documentary about the band’s touring years, Peter Jackson ’s 2021 series about the making of Let It Be , and the self-explanatory Beatles ’64 . In 2027, the Beatles ’ Apple Corps will release four more films , one about each individual member of the band. Related Sam Mendes to Direct Four 2027 Beatles Feature Films — One For Each Member 02/20/2024 Bob Dylan , like the Beatles, has always loomed too large for one movie. Don’t Look Back , arguably the most powerful rock documentary ever made, followed Dylan’s 1965 tour of the U.K. Martin Scorsese ’s 2005 No Direction Home chronicled the first five years of his career. Then the director made another documentary , this one full of fictional elements and in-jokes, just about Dylan’s 1975-’76 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Now James Mangold ’s A Complete Unknown , which opened Christmas Day in the U.S., offers a fictionalized take on the first chapter of Dylan’s career, from 1961 through the 1965 concert at which he “went electric.” Timothée Chalamet stars as Dylan, with Edward Norton as Pete Seeger , Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Elle Fanning as a character based on Suze Rotolo (the woman pictured on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan ). It’s a fantastic film, and the performances are incredible — Chalamet captures Dylan’s lost-boy charisma, and Norton channels Seeger’s inflexible idealism perfectly. The movie, based on author Elijah Wald ’s Dylan Goes Electric! , took in more than $23 million during its first week in theaters, and reviews have been almost universally favorable. Trending on Billboard The story of the movie is anything but unknown, and there’s not much suspense in it — Dylan grows up fast in the Greenwich Village folk scene, then plays an electric rock set at the Newport Folk Festival, upsetting much of the audience. Dylan’s early career now has the quality of myth, so even the most casual rock fan knows where the story is going — the joy is in seeing it get there in the hands of such talented storytellers. How surprising was Dylan’s decision to play with a rock band, given that the half-electric album Bringing It All Back Home had been out for three months and the single “Like A Rolling Stone” came out five days before the show? Were people booing because Dylan went electric, because the volume obscured his voice, or because his new songs weren’t political? Wald’s excellent book gets at the truth behind the myth — the movie just retells it. Related Have We Reached Peak Music Biopic? 11/26/2024 And why not? Stories become myths partly because they’re compelling, and A Complete Unknown evokes nothing so much as a superhero origin story — except that in Dylan’s case, so much of his origin involves making up his actual origin as he went along. In the movie, by the time people realize that this brash young Jewish kid from Minnesota didn’t really work in a traveling circus, he had managed to acquire his own mystique. (In real life, it was a bit more complicated.) As with comic book movies, this leaves plenty of room for sequels, and jokes about this have already been made. Now’s the time: Chalamet captures Dylan so well that I hope someone signs him up for a sequel based on Dylan’s 1965 tour with the Band , ending with his 1966 motorcycle crash. After that, there’s a domestic drama to be made about Dylan’s retreat into family life in Woodstock, ending with his divorce and Blood on the Tracks . That’s only the first decade and a half of Dylan’s career — there’s another movie to be made about Dylan’s born-again period, when he again offered new music to fans who didn’t receive it well. And what about a comeback story on the making of Oh Mercy or Time Out of Mind ? Dylan’s career lends itself to a certain kind of expansive storytelling, partly because he’s changed so much. ( Todd Haynes ’ I’m Not There had six different actors essentially playing six different Dylans.) But it’s also worth asking if Dylan is pointing the way forward for music films, as he did with Don’t Look Back . Think about it. Walk the Line told the Johnny Cash story in a way that ends in the late ‘60s, but Cash went on to decline in the ‘80s and came back in the ‘90s, with some of his best work, on the “American Recordings” albums. Isn’t that story worth its own movie? Straight Outta Compton tells the N.W.A. story, but the group’s members went on to have compelling careers that are worth their own stories. Related ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ Passes ‘Rocketman’ to Become One of the Top 5 Highest-Grossing Music… 04/08/2024 Film executives might suggest that the big stories have already been done, but these days aren’t big stories just foundations for a franchise? Seeing a hero become himself is just the beginning — the best stories are often about what happens next. That’s certainly true in Dylan’s case, and I think it’s true of other artists, to one extent or another. That’s the idea behind the forthcoming Paul McCartney documentary Man on the Run , which tells his story after the Beatles broke up. I hope a Dylan movie sequel follows. Daily newsletters straight to your inbox Sign Up Read More About a complete unknown music biopics More From Pro Business News Will ‘A Complete Unknown’ Spur a Bob Dylan-Led Biopic Boom? 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