Filmmaker hoping to follow up Elvis Presley car movie with Asian road trip

Moviemaker Eugene Jarecki is considering a tour of Asia in Elvis Presley's Rolls Royce after filming The King from the driver's seat of the motor.

In the film, which opens this summer (18), Jarecki tours across America chatting to backseat guests like Alec Baldwin and Ethan Hawke about Elvis' impact on culture, and he had such a good time, he's now considering an offer to take the car to the Far East and make a similar movie with local celebrities and fans.

"We're holding onto the car because we kind of want to give it back to the world at the right moment," he tells WENN. "In Asia, they're talking about me doing a tour in the car in Japan and Korea with some leading celebrities over there, which would be kind of wonderful and fascinating."

But Eugene hopes the motor is better behaved than it was when he was making The King.

"The car broke down 25 times!" he smiles. "The strange thing about the car is it only performs badly in cushy country club conditions... We drove through Death Valley and it purred right through at 112 degrees! We drove it over the Rockies. It didn't even have (tyre) chains on it and we were sliding all over the place. Wonderful!"

The director picked up the car as a movie rental after learning it was up for auction following years as a museum exhibit in the United Arab Emirates.

"A wonderful young guy on my staff found out Elvis' antiquated old jet and his car were simultaneously up for auction," he adds. "We thought, 'Isn't it interesting to watch beautiful Elvis being commodified by ugly cut-throat capitalism? What's a guy like him doing in a machine like this?' That had been why I went to look at the car.

"It wasn't in great shape, so we bought it and restored it before touching the road with it."