Baz Luhrmann claims to have a four-hour cut of ‘Elvis’
Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic of Elvis Presley, Elvis, is one of the most critically acclaimed titles of the year. The project reminded everyone of the brilliance of the Australian director and made a bonafide star of the movie’s leading man Austin Butler.
Now, the director has revealed that there is a four-hour cut of the film, but he’s too “tired” to release it. He said the extended version wouldn’t be released “now, and probably not next year [either]. But I don’t close my mind to the idea that in the future, there might be a way of exploring another [cut].”
“I tell you what, all my tweets are nothing but, ‘We want the four-hour version! We want the four-hour version!’” Luhrmann revealed to Screen Rant in a new interview. “I think people are at my gates with pitchforks saying, ‘We want the four-hour version!’”
He continued: “But 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.’”
“It isn’t just like I’ve got it, and you just put it out there,” Luhrmann continued. “Every minute in post-production, you have to do visual effects, grading, cutting, refining, and ADR sound. It’s not like it’s just sitting there finished, and I can just push a button and it comes out. You’d have to get back in and work on it.”
“I’m not closed to it, but not now,” he concluded. “I’m a little bit on the tired side.”
It seems as if the appetite for Elvis’s life isn’t going anywhere. Earlier this month, the news broke that the Lost in Translation director Sofia Coppola is directing a biopic about Elvis’s ex-wife Priscilla for A24, with Euphoria‘s Jacob Elordi cast as ‘The King of Rock and Roll’.
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