Next week, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic hits cinemas starring Austin Butler, but did you know there’s a Netflix series on the music icon coming later this year too? The Sony Pictures Animation show is called Agent King and the first look has been shared at Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
Sony tweeted a picture of an animated Elvis dressed in black and looking incredibly fierce.
The studio wrote: “Agent King, coming to Netflix, is an adult-oriented show. In the series Agent King, Elvis trades his jumpsuit for a jetpack when he is covertly inducted into a secret government spy program. While holding down his day job as the King of Rock and Roll. Designing a real-life person as well-known and specific as Elvis Presley using simple and stylized line work was a tall order. But Character Designer Rob Valley, who dedicated endless hours to drawing Elvis, was the guy for the job.”
Rob Valley was quoted as saying: “I wanted [Elvis in Agent King] to look adorable and dangerous.”
Sony added: “Color correction for Agent King was also time intensive. Artists pulled directly from movie frame references to achieve a look that was both contemporary and vintage. Combining bold, graphic shapes with a hazy ‘70s filter struck the right visual balance.”
A sizzle reel was screened at the festival, but a trailer is yet to be released to the public.
Interestingly, although Elvis’ ex-wife Priscilla Presley is an executive producer, she’s clashed with the creative team over the project.
Priscilla continued: “I said, ‘You can’t put that in there!’ So it’s me trying to change everything that Elvis would not do. But they said, ‘Come on, give us some slack.’ And I go, ‘I’ll give up on this but you’ve got to take this out.’ They had this part where she says, ‘Yeah, you and that black hair on your head’ or something like that. I go, ‘Don’t make fun of his hair! His hair is really cool! This is so not okay with me!’”
Agent King hits Netflix later on in 2022 and the Elvis movie arrives in cinemas on June 24, 2022.