Baz Lurhmann Says There’s a Four-Hour Cut of ‘Elvis’

Baz Lurhmann’s Elvis is already a pretty long film. The 2022 biopic clocks in at 159 minutes. But Lurhmann recently revealed he had a four-hour cut of the film sitting on a hard drive somewhere. While of course, most films end up with a lot of material on the cutting room floor, Elvis goes above and beyond. He even argues that none of it is filler, it's just that he had a responsibility to deliver the film the studio wanted.

Baz Luhrmann recently spoke with Collider about Elvis; here was how he described that longer cut:

It’s a different kind of movie. I wanted to make a movie for the theater, right? I make theatrical movies. My mission is to make a movie that’s not a franchise movie. All respect to franchise movies by the way. I love my Batman. But I want to make a movie that cross generations, will come in that's not a franchise and sit in a dark room with strangers and commune in a vast American story, a vast American opera. That’s what I hope this will be and that's what I'm fighting for is to try and bring audiences of all types back to the theater.

Asked whether might ever see this four-hour cut (or some kind of longer director’s cut) of Elvis, Luhrmann added “I can't even begin to conceive what a longer version of this would be right now. But the idea that there’s a different riff on this theatrical version, that’s years down the road. It’s years down the road, but it’s possible.”

We may or may not ever see that four-hour cut of the film, but for now, the theatrical version should suffice. The film hit theaters last weekend. and has been receiving some really solid reviews.