Ladies And Gentleman, Elvis Is Coming Back To The Building … Virtually, In London Later This Year

January 4, 2024 by Dave Haynes

Via AV Interactive …

Ladies and Gentleman, Elvis may have left the building and planet, but he’s coming back … sorta.

Hat Tip to AV Interactive for reporting that Elvis Presley is being virtually raised from the dead to perform as a hologram-ish projected entity at a new immersive attraction targeted to open later this year in London.

Vegas or Memphis would seem the more logical home, but then again the Swedish pop group Abba launched a similar (but technically different) thing in east London and, as AV reports, has done £322.6 million in box office receipts in its first year.

The Elvis Evolution concert experience is being put together by the UK-based immersive entertainment company Layered Reality, working with the company that owns the rights to all things Elvis. The show will run somewhere in central London (going to see the Abba thing is a substantial subway ride out to the area that was the site of 2012 Olympics). The show will then go to Las Vegas, Tokyo and Berlin.

This is what that looks like:

Layered Reality already has two other immersive experiences running in the UK capital: Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds: The Immersive Experience on Leadenhall Street, and The Gunpowder Plot at the Tower of London’s Tower Vaults. I looked at those ones and they are more about VR goggles and other visual trickery. I’d imagine the Elvis thing would be more like when rapper Tupac Shakur was also raised from the dead at Coachella years ago.

Elvis Evolution is described as an effort that brings the singer “back to life through the power of AI and holographic projection, augmented reality, live theatre and multi-sensory effects, in a concert experience that is a celebration of his life and musical legacy, and allow people to experience his meteoric rise to fame, larger-than-life persona, and the cultural movement he catalyzed in the 1950s and 1960s.”

There will be an after-party Elvis-themed bar and restaurant, with live music, DJs and performances. So you exit through the bar instead of the gift shop, or more probably, through both.

The show peaks with a concert experience that will recreate the seismic impact of seeing Elvis live for a whole new generation of fans, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

A life sized digital Elvis will share his most iconic songs and moves for the very first time on a UK stage.

All thanks to Layered Reality’s unique blend of technology, augmented reality, theatre, projection and multi-sensory effects.

For younger readers wondering about the coming back to the building reference: “Elvis has left the building” was a phrase often used by the PA announcer at venues to let people know, after Elvis concerts, that he was in a car and not coming back for an encore.