Bob Dylan movie starring Timothée Chalamet, ‘A Complete Unknown,’ filming in N.J.

Timothée Chalamet is playing Bob Dylan in the upcoming movie “A Complete Unknown,” and New Jerseyans may just get a sneak peek.

The movie, from director James Mangold, is slated to film in Passaic, Hudson, Essex and Cape May counties, Steven Gorelick, director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, tells NJ Advance Media.

“Among the things they’re doing is they’re duplicating Woodstock in New Jersey,” Gorelick says (Dylan lived in Woodstock, New York in the ‘60s). “So they’ll be up in the northwest (of New Jersey), I’m sure, too. They’re still scouting locations but that’s one of our biggest projects on the horizon. We’re really excited about that one.”

Searchlight Pictures’ “A Complete Unknown” is slated to start production at the end of March and continue through May, he says. Filming was supposed to begin last year but was delayed because of the Screen Actors Guild strike.

The title “A Complete Unknown” is a reference to Dylan’s 1965 song “Like a Rolling Stone” (“How does it feel, how does it feel/To be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?”)

Mangold, director of the Oscar-winning film “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), and Jay Cocks (the Oscar-nominated films ”Gangs of New York” and “Silence”) co-wrote the script. The story follows a young Dylan’s rise as an artist, including his decision to play electric guitar for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, which drew strong reactions from the folk community.

Dylan, 82, is an executive producer of the film.

“I have a script that’s personally annotated by him and treasured by me,” Mangold said on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast last year. “He loves movies. The first time I sat down with Bob, one of the first things he said to me was ‘I love Cop Land, man.’” (Mangold directed the 1997 Jersey-set crime drama.)

Mangold, who directed the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line,” said the movie, which he is also producing, is not so much a biopic as a look at Dylan and his musical peers during a specific time: the early ’60s. The film includes the story of how a teen Dylan hitchhiked from Minnesota to New York, visited ailing folk legend Woody Guthrie — who was treated for Huntington’s disease at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris Plains and Parsippany, among other places — and met Pete Seeger, who helped launch his career.

Chalamet (”Dune: Part Two,” “Wonka”), 28, will sing in the film and has spent years working on the music, Mangold said in the interview.

Besides Chalamet, the cast includes Oscar nominee Edward Norton as folk singer Pete Seeger, a role originally attached to Benedict Cumberbatch.

Monica Barbaro (”Top Gun: Maverick”) plays singer-songwriter and folk icon Joan Baez, who was in a relationship with Dylan for two years.

Elle Fanning (”The Great”) is reportedly playing another love interest of Dylan’s, a role based on his earlier relationship with artist Suze Rotolo, who appears with Dylan in cover art for his 1963 album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”

Thank you for reading. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup.