“Last King of Scotland” director Kevin MacDonald is on board to direct the Elvis Presley biopic “Last Train to Memphis” for Fox 2000
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.Based on the 1995 Peter Guralnick biography, the film chronicles Presley’s early years and his transformation from a high school kid to an overnight sensation credited with ushering in a radical new era in music.
Mick Jagger and Victoria Pearman will produce through their Jagged Films banner along with Steven Bing, who will produce through his Shangri-La shingle. John Fusco is adapting the script.
The studio along with MacDonald (pictured above) and the producers will now begin searching for the young Presley, starting with a recently-launched website Young Elvis Presley where actors can submit audition tapes singing six to eight bars of any Presley song.
Jagger has been championing musical biopics lately, clearly a natural fit for the seasoned rocker. He’s also producing the untitled James Brown biopic starring Chadwick Boseman. He’s also helping to shepherd a 1970s-set music biz drama at HBO with Terence Winter and Martin Scorsese.
Fox 2000 is also no stranger to biopics on music icons — Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line” scored at the box office and at the Oscars, scoring Reese Witherspoon a best actress win.
The WME-repped MacDonald most recently helmed another musical icon bio, docu “Marley.”
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