Elvis trailer: Austin Butler stars as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming biopic

The trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie is finally out – and Austin Butler’s performance is already turning heads. See the video.

Baz Luhrmann says that growing up in small-town Australia gave him the perfect outsider’s perspective for his new Elvis Presley biopic.

The Oscar-nominated director compared the tiny rural NSW town of Herons Creek, where he was raised, to the birthplace of the King in Tupelo, Mississippi, and said its remoteness forced him to meticulously research and live the experiences of all the films he makes.

“Where I come from, Tupelo would have been called the big smoke or a city because my town was so small,” Luhrmann said while launching the trailer of the eagerly anticipated Elvis, which will be released in Australian cinemas on June 23.

“But I’m the ultimate outsider so when I go into the Moulin Rouge in Paris, I come as an outsider, and I live it.

“If I do (Netflix series) The Get Down, I come as an outsider and I live it. If I do The Great Gatsby. I come as an outsider and I live like Fitzgerald – I probably got a little bit too much into some of the things Fitzgerald did but – I do live it, it’s a real truth. That’s why I make them so infrequently.”

Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker in a scene from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. Picture: Hugh Stewart

Luhrmann said he’d always been a fan of Elvis, but that’s not why he wanted to make the movie.

Rather, he thought that Presley’s rise from poor white kid in a black neighbourhood to rock ‘n’ roll trailblazer and global superstar – not to mention his seismic impact on modern society right up until his untimely death in 1977 – was the perfect way to examine modern America.

“It’s a mythical life that he lived … 42 years,” said Luhrmann.

“But that 42 years is three great lives put into a short period of time. And what’s extraordinary about it, is that life is culturally at the centre of the ‘50s and, socially, the ‘60s and actually the ‘70s and it’s a great canvas on which to explore America.”

Luhrmann shot Elvis, which features Austin Butler in the title role, two-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks as his unscrupulous manager Colonel Tom Parker, and rising Australian star Olivia De Jonge as Priscilla, on the Gold Coast in early 2020.

Filming was shut in March that year that when Hanks and wife Rita Wilson became among the first of the celebrity Covid-19 sufferers but resumed in September.

Luhrmann was also welcomed into the inner sanctum of all things Elvis, with access to the singer’s famous home in Memphis as well as the revered RCA Studio B in Nashville where he recorded most of his biggest hits.

Baz Luhrmann, pictured with his wife Catherine Martin, says growing up in small-town Australia made him dive deep into the fantastical film worlds he created. Picture: Getty Images

“I had the privilege as the ultimate outsider to be allowed into the world of Elvis,” he said. “For 18 months I had a space on standby in the barn at Graceland, and to be in Nashville, Austin and I, in Elvis’s actual recording studio with some of the greatest musicians the world.”

Butler prepared for his role for a year before filming even started, working with a voice coach to be able to sound enough like the King to provide vocals for the early hits used in the movie, and also engaging the services of Polly Bennett, the same movement coach who helped Rami Malek win an Oscar for his role as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

He also watched countless hours of Elvis performances to do justice to the towering figure who changed the face of music and who still means so much to so many.

Butler was initially daunted by the enormity of a challenge that would see him play Presley at different ages, stages and sizes.

The late Elvis Presley.

“I feel not only responsibility to Elvis and his life, I feel a responsibility to Priscilla, Lisa Marie and his entire family and all the people around the world and love him so dearly,” he said.

“When I first started it really felt like when you’re a kid and you put on your father’s suit, and the sleeves are much too long and the shoes are like boats on your feet … and then as time passed, at least for me, I started to feel like I grew into it, and suddenly I felt his humanity more.”

Originally published as Elvis trailer: Austin Butler stars as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming biopic