His intention was to find material for the 2022 movie Elvis starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.
So, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and his team went on a search for rumoured unseen footage from Elvis’s 1970s Las Vegas concert films.
Researchers went into the Warner Bros film vaults stored in underground salt mines in Kansas.
What they found was 69 boxes filled with film negatives containing 59 hours worth of footage that hadn’t been seen.
Luhrmann’s team also found audio recordings of Elvis Presley talking about his creative process.
Director Baz Luhrmann resolved to get out of Presley’s way. (Supplied: Universal Pictures)
Given many of the audio tracks didn’t sync to the footage, the team used lip reading to match the tracks to specific footage, with Warner Bros providing more than 2,300 rolls of archive material to assist in the process.
Piecing it all together, the result is Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a feature film that will hit cinemas next week.Â
“This is the most unexpected film that ever happened to me,” Luhrmann told viewers ahead of a special preview screening at the IMAX theatre in Sydney on Monday.
“We thought ‘let’s just get out of the way … What if Elvis just told you his story?'”
Working with Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson to bring the original footage up to quality, Luhrmann was at pains to point out that Artificial Intelligence was not part of the process.
“There is not one frame of AI in this film,” Luhrmann said to applause.
“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.”
Baz Luhrmann’s film contains previously unseen footage of Elvis. (Supplied: Universal Pictures)
Despite a period during his Las Vegas residency when he was performing two sold-out shows every day, seven days a week, Elvis never performed outside the US and Canada.
“We are going to give Elvis the world tour that he dreamed of but never had,” Luhrmann said.
What is EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert?
In his director’s note Luhrmann describes the film as not quite a documentary and not quite 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 film covers a time when after serving abroad in the US Army, Presley continued his acting career, becoming one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood in the 1960s amid The Beatles phenomenon and anti-Vietnam war sentiment.
The footage in the movie was collected over various nights during Presley’s Las Vegas residency in 1970.
Presley is said to have had a great sense of humour. (Supplied: Universal Pictures)
The music is performed by Elvis, either in Vegas or on tour as well as in rehearsals, and features some classic recordings from his lifelong catalogue as well as some iconic covers.
Presley tells his story in good humour in the film — he comes across as someone who didn’t take himself too seriously.
Luhrmann describes Presley’s demeanour as “really unguarded” and “really open-hearted”.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is in cinemas February 19.