Austin Butler cast as Elvis in upcoming Baz Luhrmann film
The casting drama has ended, with one actor emerging victorious to play Elvis on the big screen: Austin Butler.
The 27-year-old has been cast in director Baz Luhrmann’s still-untitled Elvis Presley film, starring alongside Tom Hanks as controversial manager Colonel Tom Parker.
Butler beat out big names such as Harry Styles, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. His casting was announced Monday, after what Warner Bros. trumpets as an “extensive search.”
In the studio’s news release, Luhrmann says he knew “unequivocally that I had found someone who could embody the spirit of one of the world’s most iconic musical figures.”
The director says he searched for an actor “to evoke the singular natural movement and vocal qualities of this peerless star, but also the inner vulnerability of the artist,” adding “I knew I couldn’t make this film if the casting wasn’t absolutely right.”
The news sent Butler’s girlfriend, Vanessa Hudgens, “over the f------ moon,” she wrote in a NSFW Instagram post.
Luhrmann was wowed by Butler’s role opposite Denzel Washington in last year’s Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” in which he played “lost boy” Don Parritt. The filmmaker then put the actor through a journey of “extensive screen testing and music and performance workshops.”
Butler stars as Tex alongside Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (in theaters July 26). The young star can also be seen in director Jim Jarmusch’s zombie movie “The Dead Don’t Die.”