Timothée Chalamet says bringing Austin Butler in for an Elvis cameo in his Bob Dylan movie could spawn a “universe.”
Two of the most distinct voices in music history are undoubtedly Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. But if you can believe it, the story goes that the two never actually met. But Timothée Chalamet wants to change that – at least on the big screen, saying he wants to resurrect Austin Butler’s Elvis for his Dylan biopic. Oh come on, Timmy, let Austin finally shake that voice!
Cuing his Dune: Part Two co-star up, Butler said of the upcoming Dylan biopic during an interview with NME, “I can’t wait for that film…I wish I could be on set every day to just watch the magic happen,” to which Chalmet responded, “I wish you were in it!” before outlining why Elvis should be worked into the Dylan movie. “There’s an Elvis character in the Johnny Cash biopic [Walk The Line]. It’s really brief, it’s very brief, but I was kind of wishing we could create a musical cinematic universe.” Elvis was played by Tyler Hilton in Walk the Line, the movie which earned Joaquin Phoenix his first Best Actor nomination.
Like Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Timothée Chalamet does his own singing as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Although it has faced delays due to everything from the Covid-19 pandemic to last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike, the movie is still moving forward, giving Chalamet a way to capitalize on the success of Dune: Part Two and Mangold a chance to redeem himself after Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Despite their prominence – and the long-held stance that the 1970 song “Went to See the Gypsy” was about a meeting between Dylan and Elvis – one Robert Zimmerman has said that the King of Folk never actually personally encountered the King of Rock and Roll. “I never met Elvis, because I didn’t want to meet Elvis. Elvis was in his Sixties movie period, and he was just crankin’ ’em out and knockin’ ’em off, one after another. And Elvis had kind of fallen out of favor in the Sixties.” Even still, that doesn’t mean Elvis couldn’t appear in the Dylan movie.
Would you like to see Austin Butler bring back his Elvis for a small role in Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan movie? Or could Butler use an even longer break from the voice?
