A million sparrows with a million hot glue guns couldn’t recreate Baz Luhrmann’s tinsel-drenched tacky aesthetic in The Great Gatsby, and if he could do that with the Great American Novel, imagine what he could do with the story of a guy who popularized lamé and rhinestones. That seems to be WB’s thinking in courting Luhrmann to direct a biopic of Elvis Presley. I can already hear the Black Eyed Peas cover of “Jailhouse Rock…”
Director Baz Luhrmann is in negotiations to join the iconic singer, who is the subject of an untitled biopic being written by Kelly Marcel (Fifty Shades of Grey, Saving Mr. Banks), TheWrap has learned.
Marcel is hard at work writing an original screenplay about Elvis Presley, the hip-gyrating King of Rock and Roll, that will not be based on any pre-existing material. While the project is believed to be a biopic, it’s unclear which periods of Presley’s life would be depicted in the film.
Warner Bros. has secured rights to all musical components in Presley’s catalog, multiple individuals familiar with the project told TheWrap. Luhrmann has been in negotiations for several weeks and should his deal close, it’s expected that his wife, Oscar winner Catherine Martin, would board the project as costume designer and possibly as production designer as well. [TheWrap]
Production design seems like the only possibly interesting aspect to any of this, considering biopics are duller than Coldplay headlining an oatmeal festival and Baz Luhrmann hasn’t exactly exhibited a knack for storytelling in his last few movies (3D text flying at the screen, anyone?).
And anyway, for my money, we’ve already seen the best portrayal of Elvis we’re ever going to see on screen. Which is Elvis telling Clarence Worley he should shoot Alabama’s pimp in the face in True Romance, obviously. I’d watch that spinoff.