EXCLUSIVE: Baz Luhrmann is testing a top group of young actors for the role of Elvis Presley in his Warner Bros film about the legendary singer and his manager Colonel Tom Parker. Luhrmann filmed a group of actors last weekend, and will make a decision by next week. Tom Hanks is already set to play Presley’s manager, Parker.
The top names all can sing and showed their hip swivel and sneer to Luhrmann, who has a tough choice.
The contenders: Ansel Elgort, The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver star; Miles Teller, who’s about to be seen in Top Gun: Maverick, and who nearly got the lead role in La La Land after starring in such films as Whiplash; Austin Butler, who is about to be seen in a breakout turn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood after playing in the cast of Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die.
Last but not least and just as intriguing: Harry Styles, the former One Direction lead singer who broke into movie acting with Dunkirk.
This is going to be a big job, so stay tuned. Luhrmann wrote the script with Craig Pearce, and it covers the relationship between the veteran manager and the young singer, who came from dirt-poor origins to become an iconic star who changed the course of music. Parker was reputed to have taken half of Presley’s earnings for himself, in exchange for building him.
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