Baz Luhrmann has finally addressed the rumors of a four-hour-long director's cut of Elvis.
“It’s a four-hour director’s assembly, it’s just like every single bit I shot and strung out in long, long, long scenes," the filmmaker told the Inside Total Film podcast. "It wasn’t just, like, hundreds of other scenes. It won’t be this year, it won’t be next year, but I am about to do on Hulu a show called Faraway Downs with ‘Australia’ reimagined with no new footage. It’s all of the footage I did shoot, but with new music I did with a lot of indigenous performers and singers. And there’s definitely some big plot changes and developments. It’s a variation of the same work.
It’s not gonna happen this year, but one thing I can tell you is that the performance sequences that Austin [Butler] did are very much longer than they are in the movie, and there are some he did that aren’t in the movie, and even just releasing those maybe extended is something I was considering," he continued. "Can I see a day where an extended, reimagined version like Faraway Downs comes to streaming? Yes, I could imagine that."
Luhrmann added: "The clickbait is that I’m too tired to do it, but it takes a lot of money. It’s not just sitting there unfinished."
Elvis debuted to widespread acclaim, with even Presley's family expressing their approval and enjoyment of the film. It would go on to gross over $285 million at the global box office, making it the second-highest grossing music biopic of all time behind Bohemian Rhapsody.
