A24 Takes on the Elvis Legend in First Trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla

It’s an almost disorienting feeling to see the life of a massive pop cultural icon depicted on screen in the form of a lavish Hollywood feature film … and then see the same life depicted again in an entirely different film only a few months later. It can’t help but highlight the unreality of the Hollywood process; the way the same events can be depicted in totally different ways depending on the writer’s interpretation–or desires–of what “really happened.” Case in point: It’s been just about a year since Baz Luhrman’s hyperbole-laden, ultra-stylized Elvis roared into American theaters, and now we’re getting another take on some of the same material, this time from A24 and Sofia Coppola. But at the same time, Coppola’s Priscilla looks to make its intentions clear as being a very different kind of story, as you can see below in the first trailer released today.

Coppola, the director of such films as The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and The Beguiled, has no apparent interest in performing the Elvis story with the kind of bombast seen in Luhrman’s movie. And indeed, this time around it’s not really Elvis’ story at all–the film focuses on a teenage Priscilla Ann Wagner as she meets the rock and roll icon and gets swept up into a fantastical life at Graceland. Actress Cailee Spaeny (The Craft: Legacy, Mare of Easttown) portrays Priscilla, reportedly from the ages of 15 to 27 over the course of the film, in a range of maturation that Coppola compares to one of her previous filmic muses, Marie Antoinette.

The trailer below gives us a quick glimpse of the highs and lows of Priscilla’s young life as she presumably struggles to navigate the fame of being scooped from total obscurity into marrying someone who was likely the biggest entertainment star in the country at the time. Elvis is being played here by actor Jacob Elordi (The Kissing Booth, Euphoria), despite no seeming close resemblance to the King of Rock ‘n Roll. Said Coppola: “I thought nobody was gonna look quite like Elvis, but Jacob has that same type of magnetism. He’s so charismatic, and girls go crazy around him, so I knew he could pull off playing this type of romantic icon.”

We’ll just have to see how she pulls off the epic romance between the two. Priscilla doesn’t have an exact release date, but is expected to hit theaters in October of 2023. Check out the first trailer below.