Image credits: Baz Luhrmann/instagram
When director Baz Luhrmann began researching Elvis Presley for his 2022 biopic, he was simply looking for archival material.
What he found instead felt almost unbelievable.
Key Takeaways
- Director Baz Luhrmann discovered 59 hours of previously unseen Elvis Presley footage preserved in a Kansas salt-mine archive.
- The material includes rehearsals, performances, and candid moments from Elvis’s early-1970s Las Vegas era.
- Luhrmann used the footage to create EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a film that focuses on Elvis as an artist at work rather than just a stage icon.
- Newly restored visuals allow audiences to experience Elvis in an intimate, immediate way decades after the footage was filmed.
Buried deep in the Warner Bros. archives, stored in a salt mine in Kansas used for preserving old film, were dozens of hours of unseen Elvis footage from the early 1970s. Concert performances, rehearsals, candid moments, even recordings of Elvis talking about his music in his own words had been sitting there for decades.
For Luhrmann, it wasn’t just lost footage. It felt like rediscovering Elvis in real time.
From that material, he created a new concert film, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, built around the idea of simply letting audiences spend time with Elvis at a powerful moment in his life: energized, funny, deeply focused on his craft.
“This is the most unexpected film that ever happened to me,” Luhrmann said before an early screening. The guiding thought, he explained, was simple: what if Elvis could just tell his own story?
The footage captures Elvis during his Las Vegas residency years, rehearsing for shows at the International Hotel. Instead of only polished stage performances, viewers see the in-between moments: Elvis joking with his band, testing songs, adjusting arrangements, and working through lyrics.
In one scene, he performs “Burning Love” while still reading the words. In another, he experiments with Beatles songs like “Something” and “Yesterday.” The film also includes electrifying versions of classics such as “Hound Dog,” “That’s Alright,” and “Suspicious Minds.”
What makes the film feel different is how close it gets to Elvis as a working artist. He’s not framed as an untouchable icon, but as someone thinking, practicing, and creating in the moment.
Image credits: Baz Luhrmann/instagram
The decades-old film was restored by the same team that worked on the Beatles documentary Get Back, bringing remarkable clarity to footage that might otherwise have remained unseen. Many viewers say it feels less like watching history and more like sitting in the room with him.
For Luhrmann, the project became something unexpectedly intimate – a chance to let Elvis’s own voice, humor, and presence lead the experience.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert began a limited IMAX run on February 20 before expanding to wider theaters on February 27.
More than fifty years after these moments were captured, audiences are finally seeing Elvis not just as a legend, but as he actually was: present, playful, and completely alive in his music.
It’s stories like these that bring people together and remind us of what truly matters. Small moments of care, empathy, and love can leave a lasting impact – not just on those involved, but on everyone who hears them.
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