Austin Butler Reveals New Way He Is Getting Rid of Elvis Accent

Austin Butler has become a significant rising star in Hollywood, following his award-winning turn in Baz Luhrmann's movie Elvis. In the time since Elvis made its theatrical debut in 2022, part of the fervor surrounding Butler has concerned his distinct vocal cadence, which he began to adopt in his personal life after playing Elvis Presley onscreen. During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his role in the Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air, Butler revealed that he hired a dialect coach to help him shake his Elvis accent.

"It was a lot," Butler said. "I was just trying to remember who I was. I was trying to remember what I liked to do. All I thought about was Elvis for three years... I had a dialect coach just to help me not sound like Elvis in that [project]."

Who Does Austin Butler Play in Dune: Part Two?

Butler is cast as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Dune: Part Two, the heir to Baron Harkonnen's empire who becomes a significant adversary for Paul Atredies (Timothee Chalamet).

"I'm always nervous. I always feel an incredible pressure," Butler explained in an interview with Interview Magazine last fall. "I felt that when I was 12 years old. Even if the material doesn't really require it, I feel I need to do the best that I possibly can. That sets a bar, and then I'm always afraid that I'm going to miss something. With Dune it was interesting, because I met with Denis [Villeneuve], and we got along very well, and started talking about the character. At that point, we didn't even have a script, but as we started talking about Feyd, my imagination started running, and I started to feel the terror of the challenge. That's what I'm guided by now: What really scares me?"

Will There Be an Extended Cut of Elvis?

As Luhrmann previously hinted to ScreenRant, his rumored four-hour cut of Elvis could potentially be released — at a later date. He most recently indicated that the project could live on as a television series, similarly to how he recut his 2008 film Australia into the recent Hulu series Faraway Downs.

"Not now, and not probably next year," Luhrmann explained. "But I don't close my mind to the idea that in the future, there might be a way of exploring another [cut]. I've got to be really careful here, because the moment I put it out there... I tell you what, all my tweets are nothing but, 'We want the four-hour version! We want the four-hour version!' I think people are at my gates with pitchforks saying, 'We want the four-hour version!' But I don't close my mind to the idea that there would be an extended cut. Right now, with how long it's stayed in the theaters and how well it's done, it's crossed the line. But it's done so well on HBO Max over the weekend, so it's about the parent company going, 'Wow, it's really worth spending the money.'"

"Because it isn't just like I've got it, and you just put it out there," Luhrmann continued. "Every minute in post-production, you have to do visual effects, grading, cutting, refining, and ADR sound. It's not like it's just sitting there finished, and I can just push a button and it comes out. You'd have to get back in and work on it. To do an extended cut, you'd be working on it for another four or six months something. I'm not closed to it, but not now. I'm a little bit on the tired side."

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