Elvis is back in the building. A little more than a year after Elvis, Baz Luhrmann's epic biopic of the music icon, became one of the biggest movies of 2022, Sofia Coppola brings Elvis back to the screen, but this time as a supporting character in her new movie Priscilla. But with the two movies releasing about 17 months apart, what differences can audiences expect?
"Baz and I… we approach filmmaking so differently that I feel there was space," Coppola said at a virtual press conference attended by What to Watch. "His [movie] was really, I think, about Elvis as the performer, outward, and I feel [Priscilla] is really kind of the flipside of Priscilla's story and looking at him in a more intimate way, their private life. … the scale of it is done in a more intimate way.”
Anyone who watched Elvis would know that Luhrmann infused it with plenty of his trademark extravagance. The Oscar-winning Coppola's filmography, which includes Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and Somewhere, is often a bit more grounded, though certainly not without her own unique flourishes.
Coppola put her touch on the story from the very beginning, writing the adaptation of Priscilla Presley's 1985 autobiography Elvis and Me in addition to directing the movie. The movie gives Priscilla's perspective of her relationship with Elvis and how it was impacted by his rise to fame, with Cailee Spaeny portraying Priscilla — a performance that already won her the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival and another nomination for Outstanding Lead Performance from the Gotham Awards — with Saltburn and Euphoria star Jacob Elordi as Elvis.
In addition to the style and focus of Priscilla being compared to Luhrmann's Elvis, fans also aren't likely to be able to stop themselves from comparing Elorid's work to the Oscar-nominated turn by Austin Butler in Elvis. But Coppola was interested in having Elordi show a different side to the King of Rock and Roll.
"It was really important to go by the perspective that Priscilla writes about in her book about showing him as a human… he's such a god-like figure in our culture and history," Coppola said. "She talks about what he was like, his vulnerabilities and what he was like behind closed doors, and I thought it was so interesting to ride the highs and lows that she went through and show his incredible charm and lovability and then also this dark side that he had and show it as the complex relationship that it was."
Coppola stressed that, even though this is Priscilla's story, she never wanted to villainize Elvis. The focus was just to make sure that we see him "as a human, that he was struggling," and how that impacted Priscilla's story.
Priscilla is now playing in select US movie theaters. It releases nationwide on November 3. It premieres in the UK on January 5, 2024.
