Austin Butler hip-swivels, convincingly croons, and rocks dark eyeliner in the first trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, released on Thursday. And judging by this first look, it’s safe to say the glitzy biopic about the King of Rock and Roll will be another maximalist Luhrmann production; no surprise there.
As captivating as Butler’s Presley seems to be, though, it’s Tom Hanks who commands the attention with his fat suit and scene-stealing jowls. He plays Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker, and joins the esteemed ranks of actors doing bizarre, unidentifiable accents in recent projects (hello, Julia Garner in Inventing Anna). “There are some who’d make me out to be the villain of this here story,” Hanks narrates in the trailer.
The three-minute clip essentially tells the film’s whole story, starting with Presley’s formative experiences with gospel music as a young boy, then moving on to his discovery at the hands of Parker and ascent to stardom, and by the end of the trailer, his midlife identity crisis and propensity for spray tans. “I’m gonna be 40 soon,” he says, “and nobody’s gonna remember me.”
Along the way, we hear 30-year-old Butler flexing his vocal chops (yes, that’s really him singing) with snippets of Presley’s most famous hits, like “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Suspicious Minds.” Presley’s signature campy look of glittering jumpsuits, sideburns, and a jet-black pompadour is particularly suited to Luhrmann’s more-is-more style, and the trailer features too many colorful costume changes to count.
And then, of course, there are plenty of lingering close-ups of the protagonist’s infamous gyrating pelvis, as well as the reactions of his frenzied female fans. “If I can’t move, I can’t sing,” Butler says as Elvis. “Some people wanted to put me in jail because of the way I was moving.”
Elvis has been in the works for a while now, after being delayed two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was during production on the film in March 2020 that Hanks became one of the first high-profile celebrities to test positive for the coronavirus.
The hotly anticipated film is finally set to hit theaters on June 24, 2022.
