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We couldn't help falling in love with Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in ELVIS — and now, we're getting to see more of him. Four hours more, to be exact!
ELVIS director Baz Luhrmann confirmed this week at the 2022 Gotham Awards that a concert version of the movie is coming, IndieWire reports. "It's a directors' assembly. It's not a cut. It just means 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). Because Austin did all 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," he said.
Butler previously opened up about performing these full-out concerts during production. "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. 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," he said.
Luhrmann previously revealed a four-hour cut of the musical biopic exists because he had a tough time editing it down to its current run time of 2 hours and 39 minutes. The four-hour cut explores Elvis' relationship with his band, his relationship with his first girlfriend Dixie and a "wackadoo" plot-line where he visits President Richard Nixon. "I had it in there for a while but there just comes a point where you can't have everything in, so I just tried to track the spirit of the character," he told Radio Times.
With that being said, Luhrmann isn't opposed to the idea of an extended cut. "I tell you what, all my (Twitter mentions) are nothing but, 'We want the four-hour version! We want the four-hour version!' I think people are at my gates with pitchforks saying, 'We want the four-hour version!' But I don’t close my mind to the idea that there would be an extended cut," Luhrmann told ScreenRant. 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.'"