Several years back Elvis Presley was the highest earning dead celebrity, and even if he’s currently not #1, you know his estate is still making a ton of money.
Of course it’s too bad Elvis is no longer around to enjoy his success, especially considering his manager Colonel Parker isn’t around to pick his pockets anymore either, but the king will finally be coming back – as a hologram.
After the Tupac hologram at Coachela, you knew this was coming, and it sure didn’t take Nostradamus to predict it. In fact, as MTV.com tells us, it’s courtesy of Digital Domain Media Group, the company that once created James Cameron’s effects ans also prepped the Tupac hologram. This is all in conjunction with Core Media Group, who own the rights to the King’s likeness.
The Elvis hologram won’t just be for live appearances, but also, as MTV tells us “for a wide range of entertainment projects that could include everything from film and TV.” As Ed Ulbrich, the CEO of Digital Domain said, “Elvis is the king of rock and roll…you have to start with the king.”
He also cited Tron and The Curious Case of Benajmin Button as examples of how Elvis would be brought back in the sense they would be creating a digital recreation of a person that would hopefully be close enough to the real thing that it would fool you into thinking Elvis still walks among us.
As much as many people would love to have Elvis back, it of course will only be a reasonable facsimile, and I for one would certainly feel strange paying money to see a projected hologram instead of a real life human being. There’s also no word on which phase of Elvis will be brought back, whether it would be his early years, the Vegas years, the comeback special, or even Elvis in his decline.
Maybe they can do all of them in a show, or have him change like a chameleon throughout a song. That’s certainly something a real life human couldn’t do onstage, but so much music is so digitized and soulless these days as it is, and I feel a hologram of an artist would just continue to add to that.
The fact that a human being capable of imperfection could pull off a great rock concert beyond belief is what’s so exciting about seeing your favorite artist perform anyways. With a hologram, you know it’s going to be perfect over and over again without any imperfections or magical improv that can happen in the live arena.
Elvis wasn’t always perfect, and he had bad nights that a hologram would never have, but rock ‘n roll shouldn’t be about perfection to the point where we lose the human factor.
