Elvis is a 2022 epic biographical drama film co-produced and directed by Baz Luhrmann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner.
It stars Austin Butler and Tom Hanks as Presley and Parker, respectively, with Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Luke Bracey in supporting roles.
[8] Raised mostly by his doting mother Gladys, Elvis Presley spends his childhood in the slums of Tupelo, Mississippi, finding solace in music and comic books.
Colonel Tom Parker, at the time a carnival huckster, manages country singer Hank Snow but realizes Elvis's crossover potential when he hears "That's All Right," initially assuming that the artist is black.
Feeling that his music will corrupt white children and stoke racial hostility, segregationist Southern Democrat Mississippi Senator James Eastland calls Parker to an informal hearing and probes his mysterious past.
Although he wants to become more politically outspoken in his music, Parker has booked a family-friendly Christmas television special where he will only perform frivolous feel-good songs.
Elvis's problematic behavior and prescription drug addiction overtakes him, and a despondent Priscilla divorces him on his 38th birthday, taking their daughter Lisa Marie with her.
Increasingly exhausted after a continuously rigorous schedule of shows, Elvis expresses to Priscilla his fear of being forgotten after death, as he believes he has achieved nothing worthwhile.
On June 21, 1977, in Rapid City, South Dakota,[9] an obese, pale, and weak Elvis sings "Unchained Melody" to thunderous applause.
Steve Tisch and Gary Goodman purchased the film rights to Peter Guralnick's Elvis biography Last Train to Memphis in 1995, which would have focused on Presley's early career until his military draft.
In 1996, Jerry Schilling was brought aboard as a producer/consultant and Tom Parker as a technical advisor, with Elvis Presley Enterprises entering negotiations with imaging and music rights.
[17][18][19] Luhrmann revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he got a call from Denzel Washington recommending Butler, having previously worked with him in a 2018 theatre production of The Iceman Cometh.
[28] In September 2020, Luke Bracey, Richard Roxburgh, Helen Thomson, Dacre Montgomery, Natasha Bassett, Xavier Samuel, Leon Ford, Kate Mulvany, Gareth Davies, Charles Grounds, Josh McConville, and Adam Dunn joined the cast of the film.
[33][34] On April 25, 2022, it was announced that American rapper Doja Cat would contribute an original song for the film, "Vegas", which incorporates elements from Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog".
[35] Italian band Måneskin and American country singer Kacey Musgraves are also part of the soundtrack with their respective cover versions of "If I Can Dream" and "Can't Help Falling in Love".
[38] The full roster of artists for the soundtrack album was announced the same day with Stevie Nicks, Jack White, Diplo, Swae Lee and many more joining the lineup, along with the film's cast.
To prove it, he released on social media an early 2019 pre-production test shoot of Butler as young Presley performing "That's All Right" live on set, which went viral and received an overwhelmingly positive response from viewers.
[51] Screen Rant-based Adam Bentz stated "The trailer highlights how the biopic spans a period of over twenty years and chronicles both the singer's opulent rise to stardom and eventual fall from grace.
"[53] NME magazine dedicated a standalone free-print issue of 36 pages, covering Presley's life, interviews with Butler, Luhrmann and other cast members.
[63] The film became eligible to be made available on HBO Max and premium video on demand (PVOD) on August 8, 2022, 45 days after its theatrical release, under a plan announced by WarnerMedia in 2021.
[80][81] In its third weekend the film made $11.2 million, finishing in fourth behind Top Gun: Maverick, Minions The Rise of Gru and Thor: Love and Thunder.
The website's consensus reads: "The standard rock biopic formula gets all shook up in Elvis, with Baz Luhrmann's dazzling energy and style perfectly complemented by Austin Butler's outstanding lead performance.
"[90] David Rooney wrote for The Hollywood Reporter that Butler "captures the tragic paradox of a phenomenal success story who clings tenaciously to the American Dream even as it keeps crumbling in his hands.
"[91] Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent wrote that he "makes a compelling argument for the power of Elvis, at a time when the musician's arguably lost a little of his cultural cachet.
"[92][93] On the film itself, Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave it four out of five stars, calling it "a bright and splashy jukebox epic," but that "it veers in and out of fashion on a scene-by-scene basis: it's the most impeccably styled and blaringly gaudy thing you'll see all year, and all the more fun for it.
The power in the musical numbers is drawn from Butler's turn but also from Luhrmann, who edits with the kind of frenetic rhythms that are almost impossible to resist (feet will tap) ...
"[97] Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it "A fizzy, delirious, impishly energized, compulsively watchable 2-hour-and-39-minute fever dream – a spangly pinwheel of a movie that converts the Elvis saga we all carry around in our heads into a lavishly staged biopic-as-pop-opera.
"[99] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, while praising the visuals and Butler's performance, felt mixed about the film being told from Colonel Tom Parker's perspective, saying "I would have loved to have listened in on Luhrmann and Hanks's conversations about their ideas for the character; if nothing else, it might have explained what in the world they were after here.
I honestly haven't a clue, although the image of Sydney Greenstreet looming menacingly in The Maltese Falcon repeatedly came to mind, with a dash of Hogan's Heroes.
He also criticized Hanks's portrayal of Parker, calling it "a 'true true' performance defined by a fat suit, a fake nose, and an accent that I can only describe as the 'Kentucky Fried Goldmember'.