'Priscilla' movie trailer is here: Sofia Coppola biopic tells Elvis & Priscilla's love story

The first trailer for "Priscilla," a motion picture that depicts the meeting, courtship, marriage and sometimes tumultuous love story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, was released Wednesday.

Adapted by writer-director Sofia Coppola from the 1985 best-seller "Elvis and Me" by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (as her credit appears on the cover) and Sandra Harmon, the movie is set to be released in October.

The trailer arrives during a year of extreme triumph and tragedy for the now 78-year-old Priscilla Presley and the Presley family; in fact, its arrival comes almost a year to the day after the June 24 release of "Elvis," which earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Baz Luhrmann) and Best Actor (Austin Butler), and collected $289 million at the worldwide box office, making it the most popular film of 2022 without the presence of a Minion, dinosaur, superhero or Tom Cruise.

On Jan. 12, Elvis and Priscilla's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, suffered cardiac arrest and died at the age of 54. A subsequent lawsuit involving the Presley estate was settled only a couple of weeks ago, leaving actress Riley Keough — Lisa Marie's daughter and Priscilla's granddaughter — as sole trustee of her mother's complicated estate, and ensuring that Priscilla can be buried in the Memorial Garden at Graceland, alongside Elvis, Lisa Marie and other Presley family members.

Essentially a montage of Aqua Net hair spray, beckoning Graceland gates, rhinestoned capes, shag carpets and equally thick eyeliner, the 45-second "Priscilla" trailer suggests the film will function as a similarly stylized if less flamboyant complement to the Luhrmann biopic. Footage in the trailer hopscotches throughout the couple's life, depicting Elvis and Priscilla's meeting in Germany, when the 24-year-old singer was in the Army and Priscilla was 14; Elvis in Vegas; the birth of Lisa Marie; the move to Graceland; the wedding; and even Priscilla as a Memphis schoolgirl at Immaculate Conception Cathedral School on Central Avenue.

The film's soundtrack is composed and performed by the band Phoenix (led by Coppola's husband, Thomas Mars), but the song heard in the trailer is a 1992 recording, "How You Satisfy Me," by the Australian band Spectrum.

The cast is led by actors who don't yet have widespread name recognition. Cailee Spaeny, a 24-year-old Missouri-born actress whose credits include the HBO series "Mare of Easttown" and the fantasy sequels "Pacific Rim: Uprising" and "The Craft: Legacy," will play Priscilla.

Meanwhile, Australia's Jacob Elordi, 25, known for his bad-boy and heartthrob roles in Netflix's "The Kissing Booth" franchise and HBO's controversial "Euphoria," will be Elvis.

The movie is being distributed by A24, an independent film company that has attracted a cult-like fan base due to its handling of such acclaimed, director-driven movies as "The Witch," "Uncut Gems," and this year's Oscar-hogging Best Picture success, "Everything Everywhere All at Once."

ELVIS MOVIE TRIVIA: Can you answer these 22 questions about the rock King-turned-Hollywood star?

"Priscilla" will be the eighth feature directed by Coppola (who also wrote the script), the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, director of "The Godfather." Like her father, Sofia Coppola is an Oscar-winner: She earned the Best Original Screenplay award for 2003's "Lost in Translation."

The subject matter of "Priscilla" seems tailor-made for Coppola, whose perhaps somewhat autobiographically motivated films often sympathetically depict the struggles of young women seeking to establish their own identity amid the distractions and responsibilities of wealth, celebrity and "royalty" (whether the palace is Graceland or Versailles, as in her 2006 biopic starring Kirsten Dunst, "Marie Antoinette").

In any event, "Priscilla" will arrive in theaters about three months after another female auteur's similarly anticipated film about a different famous-haired fashion icon, Greta Gerwig's "Barbie," with Margot Robbie as the fleshly embodiment of the Mattel doll.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Priscilla movie trailer: Watch the sneak peek of the biopic movie