The filmuverse is all shook up over the hip-swiveling news about Priscilla, a new feature about the life of Elvis Presley and his wife, to be directed by Oscar winner Sofia Coppola.
Based on Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me, the film will see Jacob Elordi playing Elvis alongisde Cailee Spaeny as his wife Priscilla. The memoir became a global bestseller when it was published in 1985, eight years after Elvis’s death. The script will be adapted by Copolla, who most recently directed On the Rocks. The Australian-born Jacob Elodi, 25, recently appeared in The Kissing Booth and Euphoria. Cailee Spaeny, also 25, appeared in Bad Times at the El Royale, On the Basis of Sex, and Vice. She also played the lead in the supernatural horror thriller, The Craft.
In real life, Priscilla was only 14 when she met the 23-year old Presley in 1959. They married in 1967 and had one child, Lisa. Priscilla took charge of the estate after her husband’s death and was largely responsible for turning Graceland into a major tourist destination.
Sofia Coppola is the youngest child and only daughter of Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola. As an infant, she made her film debut in her father’s 1972 film The Godfather. Her feature-length directorial debut came in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides. Over the years, she has won many accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for the 2004 comedy-drama Lost in Translation, also becoming the third woman to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Her latest film, On the Rocks, debuted in 2020 via A24 and was streamed on Apple TV+. It starred Rashida Jones and Bill Murray as a daughter-father duo attempting a reconciliation.
This has been a lucrative season for films about the legendary rock-‘n’-roll king of the 1950s. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, starring Austin Butler and Olivia de Jonge, has already grossed $150 million domestically.
Priscilla will be produced by The Apartment, a Fremantle Company and be distributed in North America by A24. International distributors include Vision Distribution (in Italy) and Stage 6 Films/Sony Pictures International Releasing elsewhere.
