Los Angeles, Feb 18 : “Elvis is back in the building” as Austin Butler brings The King to life in the first trailer of Baz Luhrmann directorial and long-awaited musical drama “Elvis”. Released on Thursday, Butler is a dead ringer as he shakes, rattles and rolls in the film. The musical explores the life and music of Elvis Presley as narrated through the prism of his complicated relationship with his enigmatic but oft-reviled manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). “Elvis” will hit theaters on June 24. Hank’s Parker rolls the ball and the trailer stating: “There are some who’d make me out to be the villain of this here story.”
“The Great Gatsby” director travels back to Presley’s childhood and covers his unprecedented rise to fame amid a changing American cultural landscape. For Butler, who steps into a new film stratosphere after making a splash in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” taking on Presley was “huge shoes to fill”, say critics. The 30-year-old actor told last week at an event that he immediately started extensive voice training, six days a week, to sound like Presley when cast for the coveted role three years ago. Trying to sound like Elvis “instilled tremendous and understandable fear”.
“That’s what got the fire burning inside of me,” said Butler, who found his mission morphing. “Ultimately it’s the life that’s important. You can impersonate somebody. But it’s to find the life within, to find the heart.” “Elvis is such an icon and he’s held up to a superhuman status,” Butler was quoted as saying by USAToday. “To find the human within that icon, that was the real joy,” Butler said. He had to beat a field of Elvis-wannabes in an internationally followed casting battle against the likes of Harry Styles, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The drama, filmed in Australia and New Zealand, was delayed by pandemic, including the episode of Hanks and wife Rita Wilson’s testing positive for Covid-19. The trailer shows how Parker immediately sees the young Elvis’ potential after the singer drove audiences, and young female fans, wild. Elvis unleashed power that transformed America over three decades until his death in 1977. “What’s extraordinary is that (Presley’s) life is culturally the center of the ’50s, the ’60s and the ’70s, so that’s what drew me into the story,” Lurhmann was quoted as saying by USAtoday “That and a man named Colonel Tom Parker.” The film also highlights one of the most significant people in Elvis’ life, his wife Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge).
With UNI Inputs
