‘Elvis’: Austin Butler’s Full Elvis Presley Concerts Will Be Shown In a New 4-Hour Version of the Movie
Actor Austin Butler brought Elvis Presley to life on screen in Baz Luhrmann’s epic 2022 biopic Elvis. Butler was intensely committed to the role throughout the two years it took to film it — so much so that every concert scene in the film was actually part of a full-length concert while filming. Now, Luhrmann is ready to release all the full versions of Butler’s concerts in a new length version of the movie.
Austin Butler filmed full concerts as Elvis Presley
Butler gave an inside look at the filming of every Elvis performance in the movie in an interview with WSFM.
“The way that we approached every [concert performance] was, for one, Baz and I early on decided that when I was on stage, we weren’t going to have a moment where suddenly we’re talking about acting,” Butler said. “So I would come on stage, like in Vegas, do the entire concert, curtain comes down, I walk off. So every time the audience is getting the experience of the show. And if we would cut for any reason, I would entertain the crowd as Elvis. It was the same thing as him having to make jokes to keep everyone entertained.”
Baz Luhrmann wants to release all of Austin Butler’s Elvis concerts in a new movie
Luhrmann has spoken about a possible extended version of the movie that includes Butler’s full performances and even an entire subplot dedicated to Presley’s visit with President Richard Nixon. The full version has a runtime of approximately four hours.
“I tell you what, all my tweets are nothing but, ‘We want the four-hour version! We want the four-hour version!’” director Baz Luhrmann told ScreenRant about it. “I think people are at my gates with pitchforks saying, ‘We want the four-hour version!’”
He didn’t shut the door to releasing it, however. “I don’t close my mind to the idea that there would be an extended cut. Right now, with how long it’s stayed in the theaters and how well it’s done, it’s crossed the line. But it’s done so well on HBO Max over the weekend, so it’s about the parent company going, ‘Wow, it’s really worth spending the money,'” he said.
Luhrmann later said that it’s not a matter of if, but when he’ll release the four-hour version of Elvis. “It’s a directors’ assembly. It’s not a cut. There’s a whole lot of material that adds up to four hours, but I have gone on record now to say not today, not tomorrow, but at some point I would do [it],” Luhrmann told IndieWire of the extended movie. “Because Austin did his concerts full out. He did all the numbers. Austin just did it and it was an out of body experience to watch him do those full concerts, so one day I will cut those full concerts together.”
Luhrmann and his team were committed to the concert scenes from the get-go. “We just had all the cameras. [Cinematographer] Mandy Walker even got the lenses reproduced from the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s to match exactly everything,” he revealed.
Austin Butler’s Oscar buzz
Nominations for the 2023 Academy Awards are set to be announced on January 24, 2023, but Oscar buzz has been following Austin Butler since the movie’s release. Butler got his start acting on popular kids’ shows like Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, Hannah Montana, iCarly, and Zoey 101, and transitioned into adult roles in recent years with movies like Quentin Tarantino‘s 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The 95th annual Academy Awards will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and broadcast from Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre on March 12, 2023.
