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A new Elvis Presley concert film directed by Baz Luhrmann, containing previously unreleased footage and audio, According to Variety, it will hit theaters in 2026.
Newly discovered recordings and conversations
“EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” is based largely on newly discovered footage from Presley’s legendary 1970 Las Vegas residency and his 1972 North American tour. The film also includes 8mm footage from the Graceland archives as well as audio recordings of Presley discussing his life. Luhrmann discovered these footage while working on his 2022 biopic “Elvis.” The film premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. It has since been acquired by Neon, which will release it in theaters in the US in 2026.
A film between concert and documentary
In a new statement, Luhrmann called “EPiC” “an experience that is neither just a documentary nor just a concert film.” He continued: “Since the day my editor Jonathan Redmond and I discovered this rare, previously unreleased Elvis material almost eight years ago, our goal has been for Elvis to finally fulfill his never-realized dream of a world tour.”
Restoration of lost recordings
Much of the unreleased material was originally filmed for Presley’s early concert films Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972). As Luhrmann explained, when he began working on Elvis, he specifically searched for this lost material in the hope of being able to restore it and integrate it into the feature film.
Not only did the team find the material in a Warner Bros. archive – in an underground salt mine in Kansas – but also 68 boxes of film negatives and unknown 8mm recordings. There was even new video footage of Presley’s famous 1957 “Gold Lamé Jacket” concert in Hawaii. Luhrmann’s favorite finds, however, were “unheard recordings of Elvis talking about his life and his music,” which ultimately inspired him to produce “EPiC.”
Elaborate restoration and sound processing
Luhrmann and his team have been working on the extensive restoration of the film footage over the past two years. They also had to “laboriously reconstruct the sound from many unusual sources,” as the director pointed out.