Inside ‘Elvis Evolution,’ the Immersive Experience That’s Using AI to Bring Back the King
Written by djfrosty on November 13, 2024
By the time Elvis Presley’s Comeback Special was taped in 1968, The King was not just on the ropes but nearly down for the count. A lengthy period in the wilderness starring in commercially successful but critically derided musicals throughout the 1960s had left his reputation in tatters as a new wave of musicians rose to prominence. There was hope, however, that a stellar performance at the special — for which a new song, “If I Can Dream,” was written — could help him win back the hearts of the American people.
This moment in time is where Elvis Evolution, an upcoming experiential installation in London, will begin for its audience. Set to debut at the recently-opened Immerse LDN in May 2025, the show’s creators view this as the moment when Presley was at his most vulnerable and authentic, making it the perfect jumping-off point for an odyssey that will trace the arc of his musical journey — from his upbringing in rural Mississippi to Memphis’ iconic Sun Studios and Beale Street to the backlots of NBC Studios in Burbank, California, where the Comeback Special was shot.
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To bring Presley’s musical journey to life, Elvis Evolution will utilize archival material and cutting-edge technology, including generative artificial intelligence, holograms and projections, alongside live music performances from a house band and themed set designs. The show comes from Layered Reality, a production company that fuses digital technology with live theater, and Academy Award-winning special effects company The Mill. In 2023, the former secured the rights from the Presley estate and Authentic Brand Group to license the icon’s image and likeness.
The announcement of Elvis Evolution came amid renewed interest in Presley’s life and music. In 2022, Baz Luhrmann’s jukebox epic Elvis told the story of the singer and his rocky relationship with manager Colonel Tom Parker. And Sofia Coppola’s 2023 movie Priscilla examined his first and only marriage from the perspective of his wife.
Contrary to those interpretations, Elvis Evolution’s director Jack Pirie — who shares a co-writing credit with playwright Jessica Siân — says the show will remain focused strictly on the music. “What I hope we can do with this show is to move away from the myth of what Elvis represented and the image of him in his later years in a white jumpsuit in Las Vegas,” he says. “We want to go back to who he was as a kid, and look at the music he was listening to and how that shaped him.”
Pirie says Elvis Evolution resulted from the success of other, similarly tech-heavy experiences to debut in the U.K. recently. In 2023, cutting-edge digital art venue Outernet in central London attracted more visitors (6.25 million) than the British Museum (5.83 million). The wildly popular Abba Voyage experience, which started in 2022 and features performing avatars of the Swedish pop group, just extended its run into May 2025.
Even Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour concert film, which was released in cinemas to big grosses last year, was cited by Pirie as an example of music fans being willing to celebrate in “a non-traditional environment.”
“Elvis didn’t sit at home listening to music on his phone, he had to go out and seek and experience it,” says Andrew McGuinness, founder/CEO of Layered Reality, which previously produced an immersive version of Jeff Wayne’s War of The Worlds musical and The Gunpowder Plot starring Tom Felton. “The fact that live music runs through the DNA of the story makes it a great property to do it this way.”
Elvis Evolution initially caused controversy when it was revealed that the show would use generative artificial intelligence to help recreate Presley in hologram form. But McGuinness and Pirie tell Billboard that the technology is being used only to enhance authentic moments in Presley’s career. For example, they say the technology will help bring new perspectives and sightlines to the ‘68 Comeback Special, for which only limited camera angles exist. As with any powerful tool, says McGuinness, you need to be “bloody careful” with how AI is employed: “We’re not trying to confect something and we take the responsibility with the utmost importance,” he says.
Tickets went on sale for Elvis Evolution in October, and only a limited number remain available through the show’s opening weeks — specifically, May 10 to June 1. The 110-minute experience will have timed entry, with several performances set to take place each day. Tickets start at £75 ($97), while VIP packages are also available, including the “Burning Love” experience, which includes additional merchandise and VIP seating, and the “If I Can Dream” package, which features tickets to the show, commemorative merch and premium access to the show’s daily after-party.
The show’s venue, Immerse LDN, opened at the Royal Docks’ ExCel convention center in July 2024 and is currently hosting both the Formula 1 Exhibition and The Friends Experience: The One In London, both of which use multi-sensory technology and set design. The immersive venue, which will total 160,000 square feet once completed, is part of a £300 million ($387 million) investment in ExCel.
McGuinness and Pirie’s hope is that Elvis Evolution will be successful enough to be toured globally, and they’re particularly excited about the prospect of taking it to some of the U.S. locations that have strong roles in his story, from Las Vegas to Memphis and beyond.
The show’s success could also create opportunities for similar experiences around other music icons; while McGuinness notes that the commercial demands and scale of such events make only a small group of artists “suitable,” he says discussions have already begun between Layered Reality and other artists’ estates.
Though Presley’s outsized legend makes him one of the few artists, living or dead, to be well-suited for such an elaborate and expensive production, McGuinness adds that one of the goals of the project was to strip away the iconography and get to the root of the person he was.
“There’s a humanity that can get lost with any musician or celebrity, and before I started this project, I was prone to seeing Elvis just as an ‘icon,’” he says. “But within this experience, you get to see him as a man, too.”