Can't help falling in love with Jacob Elordi as Elvis

The story of the biggest rockstar of our time's most intimate confidant, Priscilla, will meet the big screen.

The story of the biggest rockstar of our time's most intimate confidant, Priscilla, will meet the big screen.

We’ve barely had six months to recover from Baz Luhrmann’s vertiginous Elvis biopic, now, a new film set to examine The King’s life is on the way, with Brisbane’s Jacob Elordi tapped to play the leading man.

Sofia Coppola has written and will direct the forthcoming Priscilla Presley biopic, Elvis and Me, based on the 1985 memoir by the singer’s former wife, published eight years after his death.

Elvis Presley and his bride Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, following their wedding. May 1, 1967.

Who else better for the job than Sofia Coppola? The director has spent her entire career subverting the male gaze and deftly unravelling the complexities of girlhood. Priscilla was, after, all, only 14 when she met Elvis — very much a girl.

Australian actress Olivia DeJonge's Priscilla, although lovely, was little more than a cameo in the Baz Luhrmann spectacle. Her character was a plot detail glossed over in favour of the men in the story.

Austin Butler as Elvis Presley and Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley in the Baz Luhrmann film.

So her perspective, left in the capable hands of Coppola, whose films like Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, and The Virgin Suicides all centre on the loneliness of being a female isolated in male-dominated spaces, might fill the lacuna in the Elvis mythology. 

Will the devotees that flock to Parkes onboard the Elvis Express every year gel with whatever blush, dream-like vision Coppola has in store for us?

Still from The Virgin Suicides, directed by Sofia Coppola.

Who will star in the film?

What is it about? 

Plot details about the film are relatively slim. We know that its source material is Priscilla’s New York Times best-selling memoir, which details her six-year marriage to Elvis, the birth of their daughter Lisa Marie, and the tensions that lead to their divorce in 1977. 

Elvis and Priscilla met at a party in 1959 — when he was 23 and she was 14. This blossomed into a courtship that became a marriage in 1967. “Decades after his death, millions of fans continue to worship Elvis the legend, but very few knew him as Elvis the man,” reads the description of Elvis and Me. “Here in her own words, Priscilla Presley tells the story of their love, and the unbreakable bond that has remained long after his tragic death.”

It’s another addition to the A24 canon

Like all hype movies of the internet era, Elvis and Me will be backed by the cult production house A24. It’s the third Sofia Copolla film backed by the independent film studio, following 2013’s The Bling Ring and 2020’s Off The Rocks. 

Coppola will reunite with past collaborators

Cinematographer Phillip Le Sourd, who first collaborated with Coppola on 2017’s The Beguiled — embuing the 35mm film with a sfumato Renaissance glow — and later on 2020’s Off The Rocks, is on board as Director of Photography. As is Costume Designer Stacey Battt, Editor Sarah Flack, and Production Designer Tamara Deverell.

When will it be released?

No release date has been confirmed. The film is set to begin shooting in Toronto this Spring.

And the music? 

Music plays a crucial role in Sofia Coppola films, often acting in place of dialogue: from My Bloody Valentine's screeching shoegaze in Lost In Translation, to the Phoenix bushwhack in Marie Antoinette. There are no deets on the soundtrack yet, but what's an Elvis film without the music?