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Exclusive: Enliven Content’s Jeff Celentano and Warren Ostergard, who previously collaborated on the Dennis Quaid movie The Hill, have teamed up with Walk Like A Duck Entertainment for A Bridge Between, a sports drama about a young basketball player’s struggle to reclaim his identity on and off the court.

Based on a true story, A Bridge Between centers on Anthony Hodges, a young basketball player recovering from a severe car accident that left him with injuries and doubts about his future. As Anthony struggles with his physical and mental rehabilitation, he meets Bobby Verdun, a former basketball coach turned mentor who also carries scars of his own, both literal and metaphorical. Their chance encounter at a Ymca on Christmas Eve becomes the catalyst for Anthony’s journey back to the basketball court and a life of meaning.

The film is penned by Bobby Verdun (Hustle) and Rob Goodrich...

After a healthy box office run, Timothée Chalamet's A Complete Unknown is making its way to Hulu later this month. Directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line), A Complete Unknown starred Chalamet as the influential folk singer Bob Dylan and chronicled the artist's early years. Opening on Christmas Day 2024, A Complete Unknown proved to be a box office and critical hit, earning eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

Deadline confirms that A Complete Unknown will be available to stream on Hulu starting Mar. 27. It will arrive on Hulu 92 days after it opened in theaters on Dec. 25, 2024. A Complete Unknown was distributed through Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. The filmbecame available to own on digital platforms on Feb. 25, 2025, while its physical media release date is approaching soon on Apr. 1. The biopic also stars Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook,...

Break out the acoustic guitars and tambourines: “A Complete Unknown” will be streaming on Hulu starting next week. The Timothée Chalamet-fronted Bob Dylan biopic has finally set a streaming release date of March 27, when it will be available for all Hulu and Hulu/Disney+ subscribers.

Nominated for eight Oscars including Best Actor and Best Picture, the film charts the early years of Bob Dylan’s rise in the New York City folk scene of the 1960s. The movie chronicles Dylan’s popularity and stardom, and eventual pivot to electric that left many in the folk community feeling burned. His relationship with mentor Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) is a particular focus of the film.

Chalamet prepared to play this role for years and does all his own singing and guitar playing in the film, which earned him many positive notices and a SAG award for Best Actor. Monica Barbaro also...

The streaming release date for the critically acclaimed Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has been unveiled. Starring Timothée Chalamet as the great singer-songwriter, James Mangold's latest film delves into the early 1960s folk scene to document the rise of Dylan as a successful musician and when he caused somewhat of a stir for his electric sound at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. A Complete Unknown features an ensemble cast, including Edward Norton as folk icon Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.

Now, Searchlight Pictures has revealed thatA Complete Unknown will be available to stream on Hulu beginning March 27. This comes after the film’s successful theatrical run, during which A Complete Unknown earned eight Academy Award nominations, including a Best Picture nomination and a Best Actor nod for Chalamet's portrayal of Dylan.The movie will also be available on Blu-ray and DVD...

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Robbie Williams is British pop royalty, and he was hoping to score a worldwide hit with his recent biopic Better Man.

Robbie’s movie may not have been a box office smash, but steadily drumming up global word of mouth, even from people who have never heard of Take That. While the film is a traditional biopic in that it tells the singer’s life story, it also comes with one very bizarre caveat.

Instead of an actor playing Robbie (or the man even playing himself), the singer is portrayed as a CGI anthropomorphic chimpanzee, making it seem more like a Planet of the Apes film rather than Walk the Line.

Robbie Williams performs on stage during the “Wetten, dass…?” Live Show on November 19, 2022 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

Robbie does use his voice in the movie, but the monkey was performed by Jonno Davies,...

The U.K. and Ireland box office soared in February, generating £100.7 million ($129.9 million), a notable 20% boost compared to the £83.8 million ($108.1 million) recorded in February 2024, according to Comscore. The year-to-date figures are also encouraging, tracking 15% ahead of 2024 and 21% ahead of 2023.

Universal reigned supreme, thanks to “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy,” which delivered $49.6 million for the month, securing the title of the top-grossing film of the year so far. The latest chapter in the beloved franchise opened with a record $15.7 million, surpassing the $13.4 million debut of 2004’s “Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason.” It has also eclipsed that title’s lifetime gross of $46.4 million and is steadily approaching the totals of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” ($54.2 million) and “Bridget Jones’s Baby” ($62.1 million). The film achieved a stellar 4.5-star rating in PostTrak exit polls and an impressive 96% Total Positive score among female audiences.

At No.2 for both February and the year to date, “Captain America: Brave New World...

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I love hating on music biopics. To me, they all just feel like "Walk Hard" without jokes, and I find the genre exhausting; it also feels relevant to say here that "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping," another pitch-perfect parody of music biopics, is one of my favorite movies of all time. I also think actors should, for the most part, stop winning Oscars for doing extended impressions of people who already exist, because I think creating a character from whole cloth is way more interesting than just doing, like, a really long "Saturday Night Live" bit. That's why I cannot believe what I'm about to write, which is ... Timothée Chalamet should have won the Oscar for playing a young Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown."

I'm shocked by my own opinion on this, but I'm going to go...

Timothée Chalamet immersed himself completely into the work of Bob Dylan for years to prepare for “A Complete Unknown,” the James Mangold-directed biopic that is up for eight Oscars and has grossed over $120 million at the box office. Now Chalamet could become the youngest Best Actor winner ever if he scores the Oscar win like he did the SAG Award, but plenty are surely wondering where to watch “A Complete Unknown” if they haven’t seen the Bob Dylan movie yet.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Is “A Complete Unknown” streaming?

Not yet, but a streaming release date is imminent. The film hit theaters on Christmas and since it’s a Searchlight Pictures release, it will be streaming on Hulu likely around 90 days after it first opened. That would put its streaming release around March 25 or so. Stay tuned, we’ll update this post when we know more.

Exclusive: The journey to bring Bob Dylan’s formative story to the screen took more than a decade. The film had a coterie of producers as it wound its way to production. Fred Berger and Alex Heineman got the PGA mark along with writer/director James Mangold. The other producers are Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, the film’s star Timothee Chalamet, Peter Jaysen, and Jeff Rosen. Here, Berger and Heineman explain the road to bring to screen the evolution of Dylan from the future from folk to rock icon. The Searchlight film tonight competes for eight Oscars including Best Picture.

Deadline: When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, he didn’t show up for the ceremony. What was the process in getting him to play ball here?

Fred Berger: Alex and I started talking about this movie in 2017 before either of our seven and a half year old kids were born.

Years before Tobey Maguire starred in 2002’s Spider-Man, and before Reese Witherspoon won an Oscar, the pair starred in the teen satire/comedy movie Pleasantville. The 1998 film is now streaming for free on Tubi. The film also stars Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, Don Knotts, William H. Macy, and Jane Kaczmarek. It was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1999, including Best Music, Original Score, Best Costume Design, and Best Art Direction.

In the film, set in the 1990s, a strange television repairman, played by Don Knotts, is impressed that teenager David, played by Maguire, is so fiercely devoted to a 1950s television series. The mysterious technician then gives David and his sister, Jennifer, played by Witherspoon, a way to escape inside the TV show. David feels seemingly right at home in the silly, yet corny world of Pleasantville, a 1950s TV series, but Jennifer, on the other hand, tries to...

Quick LinksPhilip Seymour Hoffman Won Best Actor In 2006Philip Seymour Hoffman Was Nominated For Best Supporting Actor 3 TimesPhilip Seymour Hoffman Has 1 Last Chance at Redemption

The Awards season catch up doesn't just begin and end with 2024 movie releases. With the 97th Academy Awards on the horizon, it is time to revisit old winners, and really consider if they deserved that victory. Conversations have emerged on social media recently about which award the academy is most commonly "wrong" about. Unfortunately for fans, the general consensus was that they usually stumble when it comes to one of the most important awards of the night.

Those who don't keep up with the Academy Awards may think that the Best Supporting Actor/Actress award is just a stepping stone to greatness, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Just last year, Robert Downey Jr. tore through the awards season with his portrayal of Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer,...

James Marsden wants to play Frank Sinatra in a biopic.

“I’ve always loved emulating some of the old crooners, like Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin,” Marsden told the New York Post this week. “I always thought there were so many interesting stories of Frank Sinatra’s life that could be played. And for whatever reason, you’ve never really seen a movie about him.”

To be fair, Ray Liotta played Sinatra in 1998’s made-for-television movie The Rat Pack, James Russo played him in Stealing Sinatra, also made for TV (released in 2003, the movie covers the 1963 kidnapping of the singer’s famous son), Dennis Hopper played him in 2003’s The Night We Call It a Day, about Sinatra’s 1963 Australia tour, and Robert Knepper played him in 2012’s My Way, about the life of French singer Claude François.

But Marsden is still kind of right — there has...

We had custom anamorphic lenses built by Dan Sasaki, using the oldest front element glass he could piece together. He created a new hybrid that also allowed us to do close focus. Jim always likes to be physically close shooting the concert scenes. When we tell our stories, we like to put the audience in the moment. It's something we discovered on Walk the Line, how to shoot it where you feel like you're literally on stage with him.

James Mangold, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is — and for 30 years has been — one of the most dependable filmmakers in Hollywood, always good for an entertaining and solid, if not showy, film, featuring great performances, regardless of genre.

Indeed, Mangold has directed dramas (Heavy and Girl, Interrupted), biopics (Walk the Line), westerns (3:10 to Yuma), crime/thrillers (Cop Land), action movies (Ford v Ferrari), rom-coms (Kate & Leopold), action/comedies (Knight and Day), mystery/horror films (Identity) and franchise films (The Wolverine, Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). But because he does little to call attention to himself as the auteur of a film, he has, for much of his career, been overlooked, in terms of conversations about top filmmakers and awards.

That changed this awards season with his latest film, A Complete Unknown, which chronicles four years in the life of Bob Dylan,...

Quick LinksAnoraThe BrutalistA Complete UnknownConclaveDune: Part TwoEmilia PérezI'm Still HereNickel BoysThe SubstanceWickedOther Major Nominees

The 97th Oscar nominations for Best Picture were recently announced and some of the silver screen's most beloved hits will compete to take home the highly-coveted statuette. While the results were largely as expected, there were also quite a few surprises. What do you need to know about the 10 films nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Academy Awards, and where can you watch all of them before the big day? Here's an official list.

Updated February 14, 2025: This article has been updated with additional content and streaming information regarding the buzzed-about Best Picture nominees.

Anora

Read our Review

Directed by independent-cinema darling Sean Baker, Anorahas been one of the buzziest films all season and was all but guaranteed a Best Picture nomination. It won the 2024 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and has received practically...

James Mangold, the co-writer and director of A Complete Unknown, is no stranger to exploring the life of major musicians in the 1960s, having helmed the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. But in tackling Bob Dylan (played by Timothée Chalamet), Mangold approached his subject through a more narrow, intimate lens, focusing on the star’s initial rise to fame and his relationships with such contemporaries as Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). In this scene, Bob and Joan are waking up after sleeping together for the first time as the world reckons with a potential nuclear war at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Mangold chose to focus on this scene in particular because of the dramatic tension stemming from a number of factors.

Once both characters are conscious, they’re dealing with the awkwardness of waking up next to a stranger. Bob’s first words in the scene are...

James Mangold has spent decades making some of Hollywood’s most emotionally rich and visually striking films. From the musical biopic “Walk the Line” to the superhero drama “Logan” to the action-packed “Ford v Ferrari,” his body of work has shown his versatility as a filmmaker. But with “A Complete Unknown,” his Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, Mangold has reached a new career milestone: His first Academy Award nomination for best director.

Sitting down for the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, Mangold reflects on his creative process, the deep collaboration with Chalamet and co-star Monica Barbaro, his early struggles within his Hollywood career, and why he had no interest in commissioning an original Bob Dylan song for the film. Listen below!

Director James Mangold and Timothée Chalamet on the set of A Complete Unknown.

Mangold is the first to admit he wasn’t an obsessive Bob Dylan fan before taking on the film.

Receiving a single Oscar nomination would be an incredible personal achievement. But the four nominations A Complete Unknown costume designer Arianne Phillips has earned over her career extend “beyond my wildest 8-year-old dreams,” she tells Gold Derby in the final days of this year’s awards campaign.

Her bid this year for Best Costume Design is a full-circle moment. Phillips received her first nomination for James Mangold’s Walk the Line, a character-driven musical biography about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Now, she’s back in competition at the Oscars for the Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown, another Magnold feature about a legendary musician. To further add to the symmetry, Johnny Cash is a supporting character.

“This nomination resonates in a way that is similar to probably my first nomination,” Phillips says. “Plus, it was a year of great costumed movies – very vivid costume movies, big costume movies.

“A Complete Unknown,” a musical biopic starring Timothée Chalamet as “Like a Rolling Stone” composer Bob Dylan, has cemented a box office milestone, notching $100 million in global ticket sales.

After seven weeks on the big screen, “A Complete Unknown” has grossed $70 million in North America and $30 million internationally for a grand total of $100 million. The R-rated film ranks as Searchlight’s sixth-highest grossing domestic release of all time and is expected to pass “Sideways” ($71.5 million) to crack the top five in the coming weeks.

James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) directed the movie, which reportedly cost between $60 million to $70 million to produce. Since movie theater owners get to keep roughly half of ticket sales, “A Complete Unknown” likely won’t turn a profit in its theatrical run. But still, it’s no small feat these days for specialty fare to crack the $100 million mark.

Searchlight opened “A Complete Unknown” on Christmas Day,...

Exclusive: How does it feel, Searchlight?

Absolutely great ahead of the Oscars, as James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is quite known around the world coursing past $100M at the global box office.

The eight-time Oscar nominated movie is now Searchlight Pictures’ No. 6 highest grossing title of all-time at the domestic box office with $69.5M behind Sideways ($71.5M) and it’s expected to strum to the Disney classic label’s fifth best ever in the coming weeks.

In its first weekend, the Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro movie repped Searchlight’s biggest opening since Disney acquired the company, quickly ranking as the second-largest opening in the studio’s history – just behind 2009’s Notorious ($20.4M).

In its second weekend, the film became Searchlight’s highest grossing film domestically since Disney acquired the company in early 2019 – surpassing 2022’s The Menu ($38.5M...

Costume designer Arianne Phillips is 0-3 for Oscar wins to nominations. But her nod this year for James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” may be the film that turns her luck around.

Phillips’ talents have made her Tom Ford’s go-to designer (“A Single Man” and “Nocturnal Animals”), as well as Mangold’s, having collaborated with him on “Girl, Interrupted,” “Identity,” “Walk the Line” and “3:10 to Yuma.” She’s styled Courtney Love, Madonna and Lenny Kravitz to name a few, and her resume includes print, fashion and editorial work.

She was well on her way as a costume designer when she started working closely with Madonna, but was told, “You need to either be a stylist or a costume designer; you need to do rock and roll or fashion,” she says. “I chose to keep going,” Phillips says, by not picking one over the other. What she did do,...

Having partnered with such A-list musicians as Madonna for decades, costume designer and self-described visual artist Arianne Phillips is no stranger to the music world. Her latest work on James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, marks Phillips’ fourth Academy Award nomination for best costume design and her sixth collab with Mangold. The two first teamed up for Girl, Interrupted in 1999, while their work on Walk the Line, which focused on Johnny Cash’s life and career, in 2005 is revisited through the Cash-Dylan friendship depicted in A Complete Unknown. For the film, which landed eight Oscar nominations, Phillips and her bicoastal team of 42 created approximately 8,000 costumes, including 67 wardrobe changes for Timothée Chalamet in the starring role.

“So much happens in the first four years of Bob’s career that it was really thrilling, as a costume designer, to guide the audience through his dramatic style evolution,” Phillips tells The Hollywood Reporter.

RankFilm (origin)DistributorFeb 7-9 grossTotalWeek 1 Dog Man (US) Universal £3.2m £3.2m 1 2 A Complete Unknown (US) Disney £831,546 £10m 4 3 Mufasa: The Lion King (US) Disney £700,071 £30.3m 8 4 Macbeth: David Tennant And Cush Jumbo (UK) Trafalgar £680,840 £1.5m 1 5 September 5 (Ger-us) Paramount £517,000 £639,000 1

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.24

Universal animation Dog Man topped the UK-Ireland box office with a £3.2m opening weekend.

The film, based on Dav Pilkey’s children’s graphic novel series of the same name, played in 610 locations, taking a strong £5,347 location average.

That putsDog Man ahead of animation comparisons The Smurfs 2 (a lesser £3.2m in 2013), Trolls Band Together (£3.1m in 2023) and...

Rank Film (origin) Distributor Jan 31-Feb 2 gross Total Week 1 A Complete Unknown (US) Disney £1.2m £8.3m 3 2 Mufasa: The Lion King (US) Disney £1.1m £29.3m 7 3 Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (US) Paramount £708,000 £24.1m 6 4 Companion (US) Warner Bros £670,512 £737,840 1 5 The Brutalist (US-uk) Universal £607,434 £1.8m 2

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.23

Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown topped the UK-Ireland box office for an impressive third weekend for Disney; as Warner Bros’ Companion led the new titles with a fourth-place opening.

James Mangold’sA Complete Unknown fell 28% with £1.2m taking it to £8.3m total, now likely to overtake the £10.4m of Mangold’s 2006 Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line...

Reese Witherspoon revealed in a recent interview with People magazine that she burned a bridge with a fellow actor friend after she roasted her at an awards ceremony. The actor no longer speaks to Witherspoon. The “Walk the Line” Oscar winner did not reveal the actor’s name, but she did admit that the whole situation “haunts me, it literally haunts me.”

“So this friend of mine, who I didn’t really know that well, but she was a very serious, proper actress,” Witherspoon said. “She asked me to give her an award, but I had never been to this award ceremony, so I thought it was like a roast. So I got up and I roasted her.”

“But that was not the tone,” she continued. “The tone was British, elegant, classy, and I was like, ‘Remember the time we got laser hair removal?’ I’m still embarrassed about it.

If there is one song you will be left struggling to get out of your head after watching “You’re Cordially Invited,” it will be “Islands in the Stream.” There are no less than three versions of the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers song sung by the cast in the film — but are they actually singing themselves?

Now streaming on Prime, the movie — directed by “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Neighbors” vet Nicholas Stoller — centers on two families who unknowingly have weddings double booked at one tiny inn. One is for Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), booked by her dad Jim (Will Ferrell). The other is for Neve (Meredith Hagner), booked by her sister Margot (Reese Witherspoon).

Eventually, Margot and Jim agree to try and share the space for the weekend. They trade off between taking the outside and indoor event space, but when a massive rainstorm hits, Jim and his family are forced to crash the indoor festivities.

RankFilm (origin)DistributorJan 24-26 grossTotalWeek 1 A Complete Unknown(US) Disney £1.7m £5.9m 2 2 Mufasa: The Lion King (US) Disney £1.4m £27.9m 6 3 Sonic The Hedgehog 3(US) Paramount £872,000 £23.3m 5 4 Flight Risk(US) Lionsgate £810,244 £810,244 1 5 The Brutalist(US-uk) Universal £703,617 £753,400 1

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.25

Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist made a muscular start at the UK-Ireland box office with £703,617 from just 170 cinemas; as Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown wore the crown for a second weekend.

Disney’s A Complete Unknown added £1.7m – a fall of just 35%. James Mangold’s film now has £5.9m; a strong tail, boosted by awards attention, could see it chase...

It's hard to build a shared cinematic universe, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from trying, and trying, and trying again. After Marvel proved that interconnected storylines spread across multiple movies was a recipe for box office dominance, everybody started giving it a go. But few have been successful, and none have managed to match the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which remains the biggest box office franchise of all time.

For a while it looked as though the "John Wick" franchise had a thing or two to teach the industry about building a connected universe, but the abysmal "Continental" TV show confirmed what most of us surely knew: that Keanu Reeves was the real draw the whole time. Universal's planned "Dark Universe" also went out with a whimper before it really had a chance to get going, while Warner Bros.' ill-fated DC Extended Universe wrapped up in ignominious fashion in...

Reese Witherspoon Assault Story ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Reese Witherspoon once shared a mind-wrenching truth about her early Hollywood days. At just 16, she was assaulted by a film director. But that’s not all; she felt “anger… at the agents and producers” who made silence a condition of her work.

Witherspoon alluded to this in a powerful speech at the Elle Women in Hollywood event, opening up about a chapter she’d long kept under wraps. “I wish I could tell you that that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly, it wasn’t,” she admitted. Her words hit hard, especially as Hollywood reckoned with its dark underbelly during the Harvey Weinstein fallout.

The Oscar-winning actress didn’t dive into specifics about her teenage experience, but she confessed to enduring “multiple other experiences of harassment and sexual assault” throughout her career. Despite years of silence, something about this moment,...

Did Christian Bale make a super non-dramatic exit from his Batman role? ( Photo Credit – Wikimedia )

Christian Bale says he was casually told one day: “You’re not it anymore.” No buildup. No grand finale. Just a straightforward “see ya later, Batman.” If you think that sounds anti-climactic, well, you’re not wrong.

The actor opened up about his Bat-exit during interviews for Le Mans ’66 – you know, the racing drama where Bale trades in the cape for a race suit. When asked about seeing someone else play his beloved Batman, Bale hit us with some sarcasm and a dose of reality: “That’s why we’re outside protesting, outside the movie theatres.”

But here’s the kicker: It wasn’t his choice to step down. It wasn’t like he woke up one day and said, “You know what? I’m done being Batman. Let’s hand this over.” Nah,...

James Mangold, fresh from seeing his Bob Dylan offering A Complete Unknown snag eight Oscar nominations, received a hero’s welcome this weekend upon returning to the Sundance Film Festival where he got his start as an auteur.

Following in the footsteps of inaugural honoree Christopher Nolan, Mangold received a Trailblazer Award during the Celebrating Sundance Institute gala fundraiser presented by Google TV and held at Park City’s Grand Hyatt Deer Valley on Friday night. The filmmaker, who has amassed an impressively diverse resume that spans genres, budgets and blockbusters, made the most of his time in the spotlight by retracing his festival roots and delivering a call to action to all of the storytellers in the room.

He was joined on the fundraiser program by fellow honorees Michelle Satter of the Sundance Institute, Cynthia Erivo (Visionary Award), Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie (Vanguard Award for Fiction) and...

James Mangold misses the era when movies weren’t embarrassed to make audiences feel something. The director of the Bob Dylan musical biopic “A Complete Unknown” and comic book adaptation “Logan” believes there’s a growing hostility to films that wear “their hearts on their sleeve.”

“Most of my generation, my peers, have been generally fascinated by irony or detachment. I never felt completely at home in that idiom because I felt those [films] were cool and clever, but not necessarily moving,” the newly minted Oscar nominee said at Sundance’s annual gala on Friday night, where he was feted with the second-ever Trailblazer Award (the first was bestowed to Christoper Nolan in 2024). “Movies that put their feelings on the line, the way we talk about them and use words like melodramatic or chewing the scenery or too much, we kill some of the fearlessness [of directors].”

Mangold expressed his excitement in returning to Sundance,...

“I’m in a state of shock. I’m just thrilled. I’m thrilled for the acknowledgment for all the hard work that my incredible crew did with me on this journey,” Arianne Phillips, costume designer for A Complete Unknown costume designer and newly minted Oscar nominee, tells Gold Derby. “I’m thrilled for Jim Mangold, five years in the making on this film with lots of delays. It’s some good news and some very sad times here in L.A. And I am just happy to be able to share it with my community, my friends, my family, and especially my crew and my cohorts from A Complete Unknown.”

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A Complete Unknown tells the story of the rise of folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan (played by Best Actor nominee Timothée Chalamet) and eventually his controversial use of electric instrumentation.

Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Joe Tippett, Eriko Hatsune, Scoot McNairy | Written by James Mangold, Jay Cocks, Elijah Wald | Directed by James Mangold

The biopic has been a genre around since the early days of filmmaking, and over the course of more than 100 hundred years, it has changed drastically with every passing decade. In the early 2000s the genre, in particular the musical biopic, hit somewhat of a snag. It got caught up in formulaic storytelling and became a parody of itself. So much so that the 2007 film Walk Hard, made fun of the formula so much it ruined the genre forever. However, some films still missed the joke and went ahead and followed the formula anyway, such as 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The formula itself reduced the artist’s life to their Wikipedia page. Often opening with the film’s subject ready to take the stage...

James Mangold’s handsome portrait of the enigmatic singer’s stratospheric early career boasts a barnstorming lead performance yet often slips into heavy-handedness

It’s a remarkable performance. Star of the moment Timothée Chalamet inhabits the loose-limbed, live-wire physicality of the young Bob Dylan and makes an impressively good fist of capturing the frayed hessian of his distinctive voice. Acoustic guitars are plucked and harmonicas honked with the effortless fluency of someone who learned to play almost before they could walk. Chalamet’s Dylan sucks so fervently on his cigarettes it’s as though he’s breathing in the genius of the musical heroes who came before him. But while he radiates insouciant charisma and channels the once-in-a-lifetime talent, he reveals next to nothing about Dylan as a person. This is not necessarily a failure in Chalamet’s acting. It’s a deliberate choice – the film is called A Complete Unknown,...

Bob Dylan is one of the most acclaimed musicians of his generation, both as a performer and a songwriter, so it’s certainly not easy to extract any ten best songs from his catalog, outside of those in A Complete Unknown. He’s got an extensive discography that spans multiple decades and runs through many different genres of music, from acoustic folk, to rock-and-roll, and later to all-out rock. Dylan has several underrated albums from later in his career that deserve more recognition, but it’s widely accepted that the 1960s were the strongest period of his work.

James Mangold’s surprisingly accurate biopic A Complete Unknown follows the earliest era in Bob Dylan’s career, spanning from the release of his debut self-titled album to his controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival. While many of Dylan’s best songs would come after this festival set in 1965, the albums...

Music biopics do not always do well at the box office, but A Complete Unknown is a definite exception. To date, the movie has made over $53 million worldwide, and has primarily rolled out in the United States. This total is expected to grow over the coming weeks, as the Bob Dylan biopic will expand its international rollout over the course of January. While the movie's focus makes it appeal mostly to an American audience, the total will still grow as more people get the chance to see the film.

The film's director, James Mangold, is no stranger to the music biopic. He previously narrativized the life of Johnny Cash in the acclaimed 2005 film Walk the Line. The movie earned multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Actor, a category in which A Complete Unknown is likely to be a strong competitor. Barring further disruptions, the Oscar nominations are set to be announced on Thursday,...

Director James Mangold explores a pivotal chapter in Bob Dylan’s early career in A Complete Unknown. Our review:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that music biopics must follow The Formula. Whether they’re about Ray Charles or Elton John or Amy Winehouse or Brit rock outfit Queen, their stories follow a path of pivotal childhood experiences, chance meetings, paths to fame and the scourge of drink and drugs, before everything’s wrapped up with a rousing concert at the end.

The Formula was so well understood by 2007 that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story fired a silver bullet at the wretched thing – and yet still the template staggered on, showing up largely unscathed in the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody and Back To Black.

Almost 20 years after he made Walk The Line – a film openly lampooned by the above-mentioned Dewey Cox Story – its director, James Mangold is back in...

Timothée Chalamet is really embracing Bob Dylan's rebellious nature for the A Complete Unknown press tour, as he just got fined at the film's London premiere. Chalamet portrays the renowned musician, cultural icon, and environmentalist in James Mangold's latest music-based biopic, A Complete Unknown (Mangold previously told Johnny Cash's life story in Walk the Line). The actor appeared at the London premiere on a rental bicycle, which the fans in attendance loved. But, he was then punished for the bizarre and hilarious stunt, although, not for the reason you might think.

After hiring a Lime bike and riding it across the red carpet at the premiere, Timothée Chalamet received a fine from the bike company. The actor was charged £65 ($80) after the event for incorrectly parking the bike. Lime has designated parking zones for the bikes once riders are finished using them. Although, these charges normally amount to...

From Walk the Line to Logan to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, James Mangold’s career has been defined by bold choices and creative risks. Now, he tackles a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, a film set 25,000 years before any other entry in the franchise. With co-writer Beau Willimon by his side, Mangold is poised to explore a truly uncharted era in the Star Wars universe — and he’s ready to defy expectations.

For Mangold, the appeal of Dawn of the Jedi lies in the creative freedom it offers. In an interview with MovieWeb, he explained, "To me, the really important aspects are the freedom to make something new. Beau and I [...] have been working on a script, and we'll see what happens [...] Do we find a way on the page to say something original?"

Originality in the Star Wars franchise is no small feat.

James Mangold, known for exploring various film genres, is back with A Complete Unknown, a Bob Dylan biopic featuring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan. Mangold relates to Dylan’s constant evolution, explaining that he enjoys surprising both himself and audiences by taking on unexpected projects.

He told MovieWeb, ‘I don’t think I change myself. I don’t think Bob reinvents his core soul, but I like to throw myself into things that people don’t expect or that I don’t expect.’

Surprisingly, though, Mangold is returning to the superhero realm with DC’s Swamp Thing. He sees it as a standalone gothic horror film rather than part of a larger franchise. He mentioned, ‘With Bob [Dylan] you have known quantities, yes, but there are ways to interpret them.’ For Swamp Thing, he aims to bring originality to the table, focusing on creating a unique story despite the established fan expectations.

James Mangold returns to one of the many genres he's thrived in with A Complete Unknown, a Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothee Chalamet as the folk bard himself. Mangold, though, has spent a career reinventing himself in an almost Dylan-esque way. "In my own modest way, I do identify with [Bob Dylan's career arc]. My entire career, which has been a while now, I have really enjoyed changing what I'm doing," Mangold told MovieWeb. "I don't think I change myself. I don't think Bob reinvents his core soul, but I like to throw myself into things that people don't expect or that I don't expect." As people say, "The only constant is change."

Mangold burst into the mainstream with the powerful Cop Land, but he's danced through Oscar-winning biopics (Walk the Line), blockbuster sequels (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), psychological dramas, and Western epics (3:10 to Yuma). Perhaps one of his more...

Lionsgate, which had a disastrous 2024 thanks to duds like Borderlands and The Crow, are having a good start to 2025, with Den of Thieves 2: Pantera opening in first place at the box office. With Deadline reporting a $15.5 million gross, it opened in line with the 2018 original (not adjusted for inflation). It likely would have performed even better were it not for the horrific wildfires currently decimating large parts of Los Angeles. The movie marks Gerard Butler’s strongest opening since Angel Has Fallen back in 2019, proving once again that he’s a consistent draw in these meat-and-potatoes action flicks.

Mufasa: The Lion King didn’t hold up quite as well post-holidays as we thought it would in our predictions, with it falling 44% to $13.2 million, with a $187 million domestic total. That’s only a fraction of the $600 million plus grossed by its 2019 predecessor. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 came in third with...

We are living in the golden age of the rock biopic. Until very recently, films like The Doors, Ray, Walk the Line, and Love and Mercy popped up only once every few years. But in roughly the past half-decade alone, we’ve seen Bohemian Rhapsody, Bob Marley: One Love, Back to Black, Rocketman, Respect, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, and Elvis. This past Christmas, we got the story of Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown, and Better Man, in which an anthropomorphic chimpanzee “plays” Robbie Williams. And in the coming months and years,...

From Walk the Line to Logan to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, James Mangold’s career has been defined by bold choices and creative risks. Now, he tackles a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, a film set 25,000 years before any other entry in the franchise. With co-writer Beau Willimon by his side, Mangold is poised to explore a truly uncharted era in the Star Wars universe — and he’s ready to defy expectations.

For Mangold, the appeal of Dawn of the Jedi lies in the creative freedom it offers. In an interview with MovieWeb, he explained, "To me, the really important aspects are the freedom to make something new. Beau and I... have been working on a script, and we'll see what happens... Do we find a way on the page to say something original?"

Originality in the Star Wars franchise is no small feat.

At the moment, the future of "Star Wars" feels more up in the air than it has in quite some time. Much of that has to do with the fact that Disney and Lucasfilm haven't released a feature film set in a galaxy far, far away on the silver screen in more than five years. The last time it happened was "Star Wars: Episode IX -- The Rise of Skywalker" in 2019, which rounded out the sequel trilogy and the greater Skywalker Saga with it. Since then, many movies have entered development, with none making it to the finish line.

One of the most fascinating movies currently in the works at Lucasfilm is James Mangold's tentatively titled "Dawn of the Jedi." which will explore the origins of the Jedi. The film was first announced nearly two years ago, although Mangold has been slowly plugging away at it behind the scenes.

Everyone assumed that the nominees for the Directors Guild of America’s top DGA Award would include, as they did in Wednesday morning’s nominations announcement, Emilia Pérez’s Jacques Audiard, Anora’s Sean Baker, Conclave’s Edward Berger and The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet.

The question was: Who was going to snag the fifth and final slot?

The aforementioned quartet was recently joined on the Golden Globe Awards’ nominations list by The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat and All We Imagine as Light’s Payal Kapadia; and on the Critics Choice Awards’ nominations list by Fargeat, Wicked’s Jon M. Chu, Nickel Boys’ RaMell Ross and Dune: Part Two’s Denis Villeneuve.

But as exciting and glamorous as those awards shows are, they are actually less reliable predictors of Oscar recognition than the picks of the DGA, which more closely mirrors the directors branch of the Academy, which, in turn,...

When James Mangold announced A Complete Unknown, a film delving into Bob Dylan’s transformative rise to folk and rock legend, fans quickly began speculating about what other real-life people would show up in A Complete Unknown. Many legendary artists crossed paths with Bob Dylan, including none other than Johnny Cash, who Dylan formed a real-life friendship with. This made the Man in Black’s inclusion seem likely, sparking curiosity over who might play the iconic musician. For many, there was one obvious choice

In 2005, James Mangold directed the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, a critically acclaimed film chronicling Cash’s ascent to fame and his struggles with addiction. The film became a box office hit and is now celebrated as one of the best musical biopics of the 21st century. Its success was driven in large part by Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-nominated performance, which brought depth, vulnerability, and...

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has revealed its nominees for the upcoming 2025 awards, and it’s a high-stakes Oscar season, proven by the notable snubs and surprises. The five filmmakers contending for the prestigious DGA Award for Directorial Achievement in Feature Film are the following:

Jacques Audiard for “Emilia Pérez” Sean Baker for “Anora” Edward Berger for “Conclave” Brady Corbet for “The Brutalist” James Mangold for “A Complete Unknown”

It’s a category entirely of first-time DGA nominees. Most notably, this is significant for Mangold, who nabbed the first of his career for the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” which continues to pick up momentum coming after its haul at the SAG Awards noms. After helming films like “Walk the Line” (2005), “Logan” (2017) and “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), this piece of notoriety seemed long overdue.

This is also huge for German auteur Berger, who missed out on a director nom...

James Mangold isn’t afraid of tough projects. He’s tackled a wide range of films, from the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line to the intense Girl, Interrupted. But his next challenge might be the biggest yet: a new Star Wars movie.

Together with Beau Willimon, Mangold is diving into Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi. What makes this movie special is that it’s set 25,000 years before anything we’ve seen in the Star Wars universe. Mangold likes the idea of exploring a completely new era, free from the weight of existing Star Wars lore.

In a chat with MovieWeb, Mangold shared that the appeal lies in the freedom to create something fresh:

The Star Wars movie would be taking place 25,000 years before any known Star Wars movies takes place. It’s an area and a playground that I’ve always [wanted to explore] and that I was inspired by as a teenager.