5 Candidates To Star In Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley Biopic, Ranked!

So here’s the scoop. Elvis Presley is getting another biopic, but not just any old boring biopic. Baz Luhrmann is going to direct it, and he’s down to a short list of who’s gonna play the famous King of Rock 'n' Roll. He’s already signed Tom Hanks to play Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, so now it’s time for him to pick his King. The controversial list reads: Harry Styles, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Austin Butler. A formidible list, to be sure, and we have no clue who’s gonna take home the part.

However, we do have some ideas on who would be best for the role out of these 5 candidates. Here's a ranking of who we think should play Elvis Presley!

1. Miles Teller

Miles Teller, obviously. When we initially saw Miles Teller’s name on the shortlist, we were thrilled. We’ve seen him do it all, from a brooding alcoholic in The Spectacular Now to a damaged soldier in Thank You for Your Service, Teller definitely has the scope to accurately portray Presley’s story. But can he sing? As a matter of fact, he can! He proved this to us when he jumped on stage with Keith Urban back in 2016 to sing “My Girl”. On top of all that, he’s a dead ringer for Elvis -- we even discussed this with the actor when he visted the Young Hollywood Studio... 8 years ago!!! Will our premonition finally come true? We hope so! That’s why he’s our No. 1 choice.

2. Austin Butler

Hear us out on this one. While we haven’t seen a whole lot of Austin Butler lately (unless you’ve been stalking Vanessa Hudgens’s Instagram feed…), when we did see him in “The Carrie Diaries”, he was flipping fantastic as the brooding love interest of young Carrie. Plu,s he’s got that hard look about him that the other contenders lack. A big pro for Butler is that he isn’t as well-known as some of the other names like Harry Styles and Ansel Elgort, and inconsequentially doesn’t have any baggage that comes with it. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t relevant. By the time filming will begin for the upcoming Elvis Presley biopic, Butler will be fresh out of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, so people will be talking about him plenty.

3. Ansel Elgort

We love Ansel Elgort, we really do. He blew our minds as the mysterious, reckless teen in BabyDriver and he stole our hearts in The Fault in Our Stars, but he has too much of the Soft Boi thing going on to really embrace the spirit of Elvis Presley. He needs a little more macho and a little less delicacy. I’d give him a solid 6/10 on Presley-look-a-likeness scale.

4. Aaron Taylor-Johnson

To be honest, based on looks alone, he’s definitely a contender. The English actor and screenwriter is best known for his role as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and he can definitely do brooding, but can he swivel his hips like the King?

5. Harry Styles

There have been some polls floating around on the web recently that indicate that Harry Styles is the leading choice of the public to play Elvis Presley in this upcoming biopic, but we just can’t get ourselves to hop on the Harry Styles bandwagon. We love him with all our hearts, but I wouldn’t be doing The King justice by rooting for him. Styles already has too big of a brand name and not enough acting experience to pick up such a large and serious project, IMO. Yes, Styles sings like an angel; talent is not the issue here. The most important angle of the film is to capture Elvis’s essence, and Harry is too much of his own brand that I think it would be a distraction from the subject at hand.