Austin Butler stunned audiences with his portrayal of Elvis Presley in the 2022 Elvis biopic, and the movie's director Baz Luhrmann says more Elvis content may be on the way.
Talking to IndieWire at the 2022 Gotham Awards, the director said he plans to put together a "directors' assembly" of the full concerts Butler performed as Elvis. When shooting the movie, Butler didn't simply perform specific songs, but he recreated Presley's full concerts from top to bottom, and Luhrmann says that footage adds up to four hours.
"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 shared. "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."
Not only did Butler recreate Presley's concerts when it comes to every song and dance move, the movie crew also used "reproduced" camera lenses from the '60s and '70s and '80s to correctly capture the feeling of the performances.
Luhrmann previously teased the four-hour cut of Butler's performance, and since then, he says fans have been "at my gates with pitchforks saying, 'We want the four-hour version!'" However, the director says he's still weighing the benefits of releasing the footage.
"Right now, with how long it's stayed in the theaters and how well it's done, it's crossed the line," he says. "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.'"
According to The Film Stage, Butler, too, has commented on the fully immersed process of recording the concert footage. The actor says he would stay in character for the entirety of the show, as if he were doing a real concert.
"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."
