First 'Elvis' trailer: Austin Butler explodes to life as Presley in Baz Luhrmann's new movie

Elvis is back in the building.

Austin Butler brings The King to life in the first trailer, released Thursday, for director Baz Luhrmann's long-awaited musical drama "Elvis" (in theaters June 24).

Butler is a dead ringer as he shakes, rattles and rolls in the film that explores the life and music of Elvis Presley – told through the prism of his complicated relationship with his enigmatic and oft-reviled manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks).

Hank's Parker kicks off the story and the trailer stating, "There are some who'd make me out to be the villain of this here story."

The film by "The Great Gatsby" director Luhrmann travels back to Presley's childhood and covers his unprecedented rise to fame amid a changing American cultural landscape.

Elvis Presley movie: Austin Butler cast as The King

For Butler, who steps into a new film stratosphere after making a splash in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," taking on Presley was "huge shoes to fill."

At an event last week with Luhrmann to promote the trailer, the 30-year-old actor said that he immediately started extensive voice training, six days a week, to sound like Presley when cast for the coveted role three years ago. Trying to sound like Elvis instilled tremendous and understandable fear.

"That's what got the fire burning inside of me," said Butler, who found his mission morphing. "Ultimately it's the life that's important. You can impersonate somebody. But it's to find the life within, to find the heart."

"Elvis is such an icon and he's held up to a superhuman status," Butler said. "To find the human within that icon, that was the real joy."

Butler beat out a field of Elvis-wannabes in an internationally followed casting battle against the likes of Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Harry Styles. The drama, filmed in Australia and New Zealand, was hobbled by pandemic delays, including Hanks and wife Rita Wilson's quarantine as the first Hollywood celebrities to test positive for COVID-19.

The trailer shows how Parker immediately sees the young Elvis' potential after the singer drove audiences, and young female fans, wild.

"The Colonel goes, I have no ear for music, but I can see what he's doing to that audience," said Luhrmann.

The force of Elvis' unleashed power transformed America over three decades until his death in 1977. "What's extraordinary is that (Presley's) life is culturally the center of the '50s, the '60s and the '70s, so that's what drew me into the story," said Lurhmann. "That and a man named Colonel Tom Parker."

The drama also highlights one of the most significant and influential people in Elvis’ life: wife Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge).

After Butler posted the trailer on Instagram Thursday, the official Elvis Presley Instagram page gave an endorsement with three thunderbolts in the comment section.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Elvis' movie trailer: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks rock first look