Martin Scorsese and Netflix are shaping up to have a very big year together: next winter, Scorsese will release his star-studded (De Niro! Pacino! Pesci! Keitel!) mob movie The Irishman on Netflix (and in theaters, don't worry cinephiles). But before that, his long-awaited mid-70s Bob Dylan documentary will hit the streaming platform (and a few cinemas around the country) this summer.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese has been in the works for over a decade; it is the follow-up to Scorsese's previous Dylan doc, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, which covered Dylan's rise in the '60s. The new doc will focus on Dylan's legendary 1975 tour, which was a rolling caravan of musicians and writers (including Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg and Sam Shepard, T-Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson and more).
Netflix said in a release that the film "captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Dylan performed during the fall of that year" and describes it as "part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream."
The doc will be released on Netflix on June 12th; there will be a concurrent theatrical release in NYC and Los Angeles. Plus, the night before the official release, Netflix will have one-time "road show" theatrical showings set for 20 cities: London, Paris, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Portland, Tulsa, Tempe, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Bologna, Sydney, L.A. and NYC.
Also, Dylan will release a CD box set of material from the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour and rehearsals, with a 14-disc, 148-track collection coming on June 7th.
All of this means that there are still two vital pieces of the Rolling Thunder Revue story that won't necessarily be a part of it: the 1976 leg of the tour (which Variety posits could deserve its own box set eventually), and Renaldo and Clara, the never-officially-released four-hour long movie Dylan made during the tour.
Or perhaps Scorsese did incorporate some of that footage into his doc, and just wants to keep it a surprise for fans. In the meantime, check out the official poster below.
