Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Baz Luhrmann Keen To Make A Movie About Elvis Presley

May 13, 2014

Baz Luhrmann Keen To Make A Movie About Elvis Presley

If anyone can do this project justice then it's Baz Luhrmann! Casting wouldn't be that hard with so many Elvis impersonators, right? There are some very good ones out there.

ELVIS lives. The Elvis Presley estate, which has long refused to allow his music to be used in biopics, is considering approving a wave of movies about rock ’n’ roll’s most popular performer — and Baz Luhrmann is leading the pack.

Fans credit the thaw to the singer’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley, 46.

The estate, which wants to maintain Presley’s image as a clean-living southern boy, has until now refused to release music to filmmakers for fear they might focus on his drug use and his interest in the occult.

As a result, there have been television dramas, fictional representations and cameos in films about Presley’s peers — such as Johnny Cash — but not one big-screen film about his life.

Without songs such as Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock, an Elvis biopic would feel “empty”, according to the film director John Carpenter.

Lisa Marie may have eased such restraints in response to pleas from Luhrmann, whose films have impressed her. The Australian director has recruited London-based scriptwriter Kelly Marcel to produce a portrait of the Mississippi-born singer in the 1960s.

Luhrmann has promised an “extravagant but truthful” retelling of these years in an as-yet uncast and untitled film for Warner Bros, due in 2016.

There has also been a surge of interest in scripts about Elvis such as The Identical, which will focus on the singer’s faith. Another is based on Presley’s biography, Last Train to Memphis, set in the city in the 1950s.

The Presley estate has been more wary of another project, Fame and Fortune, based on a loving but unflattering memoir by a former bodyguard.