Baz Luhrmann is the first admirer of Austin Butler’s performance as Elvis Presley. The ‘Elvis’ director confirmed to IndieWire at the 2022 Gotham Awards that at some point there will be a version of the biopic with all the full concerts and performancesalthough he has not quite made it clear if that is the planned 4-hour version that he had already talked about.
Luhrmann commented in a reel of the American medium:
“It is a draft of the director, it is not a montage. There’s a lot of material that adds up to four hours, but now I’ve made the decision that not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point I would. Because Austin did the concerts of him giving the maximum. He did all the musical numbers. Austin just did it and it was a religious experience to see him do those entire concerts, so one day I’m going to edit them all together.”
Luhrmann continued, explaining why the performances have added value:
“We had all the cameras and angles. Cinematographer Mandy Walker even replicated the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s lenses to exactly match the entire original look”
The director had already made reference in ScreenRant to the megalomaniac four-hour montage of ‘Elvis’ that included a subplot featuring Presley’s visit to President Richard Nixon:
“Tell you what, all my tweets only get a response of ‘We want the four hour version! We want the four hour version! I think people are at my doors with pitchforks saying, ‘We want the four hour version! hours! But I don’t close my mind to the idea that there would be an extended cut. Right now, with how long it stayed in theaters and how well it did, it exceeded expectations. But it did very well on HBO Max over the weekend week, so now it’s a matter of the parent company saying, ‘Wow, really worth the money’.”