EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2025) Review

Baz Luhrmann transforms lost footage into EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a stunning IMAX experience narrated entirely by the King himself.

What happened over the next 96 minutes was one of the most thrilling moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had. This is, no exaggeration, a film you need to see on the biggest screen you can find.

The backstory is half the fun. While making his 2022 biopic Elvis, Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby) sent researchers into the Warner Bros. film vaults, buried in underground salt mines in Kansas, hunting for rumored unseen footage from the 1970s concert films Elvis: That’s the Way It Is and Elvis on Tour. They unearthed 69 boxes containing 59 hours of never-before-seen film negatives. Archivist Angie Marchese also contributed Super 8 footage from the Graceland Archives. Most of it arrived without sound. Then came the real discovery: a 45-minute audio recording of Elvis Presley talking about his own life, completely unfiltered, like he was sitting across the table from you.

Luhrmann took it all and made something that defies easy categorization. EPiC isn’t a documentary. It’s not a standard concert film. The entire runtime is narrated by Elvis himself. No talking heads. No historians. Just the King, threading his own story between performances that span from the raw voltage of the 1957 “gold jacket” show in Hawaii to the sweat-drenched Vegas residency. His voice sounds so vivid you’d swear he recorded it last year, and the effect is completely disarming.

The restoration is jaw-dropping. Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production in New Zealand brought the 35mm footage back to remarkable clarity, nearly 3D in depth. You can see individual beads of sweat. You can feel the roar of the crowd pressing against your chest. Supervising sound editor Wayne Pashley and his team spent two years syncing audio from dozens of unconventional sources, and the result is flawless. On IMAX, this is one of the best presentations I’ve ever sat through. Every cent of that upcharge earns itself back tenfold.

What sneaks up on you is how personal it gets. You know the broad strokes: Tupelo, Memphis, Sun Records, global phenomenon. But hearing Elvis Aaron Presley reflect on his own journey, as he delivers scorching renditions of “Suspicious Minds” and “Burning Love,” dissolves the icon and leaves the man behind. Luhrmann wisely skips the darkest chapters of the later years. His 2022 film with Austin Butler already covered that territory. This is a music-first experience, a visual soundtrack companion to that earlier work, and it connects with stunning force.

The sadness finds you anyway. We know how Elvis’s story ends. He doesn’t. Hearing plans being made and promises being spoken, knowing he’d leave behind a young daughter and music that would outlive everything, lands hard in a packed theater. The TIFF crowd erupted after barn-burner performances with such ferocity I had to physically stop myself from leaping out of my seat. This is one film where seat belts should be required. And when Bono’s original poem “American David” brings it all home in the final moments, you’ll find tears and a grin sharing space on your face simultaneously. Go see this. On the biggest screen. As soon as you possibly can.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert will be released in US theaters, in UK & Irish cinemas and globally in theatres on February 27, 2026.