How Newly Found Footage Became ‘EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert’
Baz Luhrmann discovered a trove of unused film while researching his 2022 Elvis biopic. The reels, now owned by Warner Bros., had been stored in a salt mine in Kansas; Luhrmann paid to have researchers access the vault and found 69 boxes of 35-millimeter and 16-millimeter material, much of it mislabeled, damaged or incomplete.
There was a major complication: the picture existed without synced sound, because film and audio had been archived separately. The filmmakers pieced together available recordings, scanned the footage in 4K and added home-movie reels from Graceland, but the project only unlocked after they located an audio-only interview in which Elvis spoke candidly about his life and career.
United States, Kansas
baz luhrmann, elvis presley, epic, warner bros, kansas, salt mine, graceland, 35mm film, audio interview, 4k scan