The upcoming Epic, Elvis Presley: In Concert, directed by Baz Luhrmann, is to hit cinema screens next week.
This comes after Luhrmann and his team went to the Warner Bros film vaults which were stored along the salt mines in Kansas, as part of a mission to find material for the 2022 film starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.
It was here that they discovered 69 boxes of film negatives containing almost 60 hours of previously unseen footage. They also found audio recordings of Elvis Presley chatting about his creative process.
Luhrmann's team soon set about using lip reading to match the tracks to the specific footage, with Warner Bros providing over 2,300 rolls of archive material to help in this process.
Elvis Presley: In Concert, will look at Elvis' acting career takes off after serving abroad in the US army, as he becomes one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood in the 1960s in a period in a period of Beatlemania, and the anti-Vietnam war protests.
Speaking about the finished product at a special preview screening at the IMAX theatre in Sydney, Australia, Baz Luhrmann had this to say.
"This is the most unexpected film that ever happened to me", he said. "We thought 'let's just get out of the way … What if Elvis just told you his story?'".
Elsewhere, Luhrmann revealed that he worked closely with legendary director Peter Jackson to put this together, while also insisting that AI did not play any part in the process.
"There's no visual effect either … it's the visual effect Elvis has on his audience — that's the only visual effect in this film", Luhrmann stated.
Writing a director's note, Baz Lurhmann explained that the film is neither a documentary nor a concert film.
"What if Elvis came to you in a dreamscape, almost like a cinematic poem, and sang to you and told you his story in a way in which you haven't experienced before?", he wrote.
The music for this film will be performed by Elvis himself, taken from his shows in Vegas or on tour as well as rehearsals. Classical recordings from the late music legend's catalogue and iconic covers will also feature.
Paying tribute to Elvis, Luhrmann said the legend was "really unguarded" and "really open-hearted".
The trailer for Elvis Presley: In Concert was released last month. You can check it out below.
Find out more about the project via Nova's report here.
