Review by Brad Balfour, Arts Editor
Film: “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert”
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Elvis Presley
In 2022, Australian director Baz Luhrmann co-produced and co-wrote a screenplay with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner titled “Elvis.” Starring Austin Butler. that film hyped up the life of Elvis Presley, the once transgressive American rock and roll singer and actor, transforming him into some kind of mythic figure, an almost otherworldly pop god.
Under Colonel Tom Parker’s management — with Tom Hanks as Parker — the naive sex symbol was first made into a provocateur, sometimes even buffoonish and then a low-rent teen movie star. But thankfully despite all image issues and controversy, Luhrmann still managed to embrace his transcendental qualities through Butler’s performance and convey some of what made him such an icon.
Through “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” the director has made an equally transcendent documentary about Presley using much unreleased concert footage and previously unheard or unseen interview materials. As Luhrmann’s follow-up to his biographical film, the flamboyant filmmaker manages to meld footage from various performances into a seamless whole. This both demonstrated both Presley’s innocent side and his cunning manipulations which captured audiences in general and most of the women in particular.
Luhrmann originally sought out unseen footage of Elvis Presley from “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” and “Elvis on Tour” with the intent of using it in his 2022 Elvis film. After discovering 68 boxes of both 35mm and 8mm footage in the Warner Bros. film archives within salt mines in Kansas, he got not only the actual concert footage but outtakes from both films, as well as the “gold jacket” performance from Hawaii in 1957 and unheard interviews.
The film is propelled by that footage shot at the beginning of the famed performer’s Las Vegas residency at the International Hotel. Originally intended to last a few weeks, the 1969 engagement was shockingly lucrative, and stretched on for over seven years.
This footage, however, came without sound. Over the next two years, Luhrmann’s team restored and synced it to existing audio sources. In this process, a 45-minute audio recording of Presley talking about his life story was uncovered and used to good effect in this film.
All this material forms the basis of “EPiC.” Luhrmann has described the project as neither fully a documentary nor a concert film, but “something new in the Elvis canon… that befits the magnitude of Elvis as a performer but also offers deeper revelations of his humanity and inner life.”
It will be seen in IMAX theaters starting February 20th, before its general theatrical release one week later on February 27, 2026. With this big screen experience, Elvis gets a close-up viewing like never before.
Various images and short clips from the editing process, including one of the “gold jacket” performance, have been shared by Luhrmann on his Instagram account throughout 2025. In May, Luhrmann shared footage from “EPiC” at a Sony Music Vision showcase. Then, in August, he shared a previously unseen restored clip of Presley singing “Oh Happy Day” and announced that the film would premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It premiered to positive reviews and was then shown January 8, 2026 at Graceland on what would have been the King’s 91st birthday.
This run-up to its full release just serves to showcase a film which really does the King proper service and further keeps his legend alive.