He’s just a hunka hunka spy for the U.S. Government.

Well, this is certainly an unusual premise. Netflix is working on a show called Agent King, which they’re billing as an “animated adult action comedy” about Elvis Presley, the King himself, moonlighting as “a covert government agent who fights to keep America safe” while also fitting in the occasional jailhouse rock and rock-a-hula. Even more surreal, Presley’s own ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, is one of the show’s co-creators and producers.

Agent King belongs to a long tradition of speculative fiction (if not outright conspiracy theories) about Elvis. Author Gail Giorgio wrote a novel called Orion imagining a Presley who faked his own death and then continued performing under a mask. (The story got even stranger when an actual country singer named Jimmy Ellis began performing concerts under a mask as “Orion.”) And of course there’s also Elvis’ famous meeting with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970 that has been fictionalized several times, including recently as the film Elvis & Nixon starring Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey as the two title characters.

The premise of Agent King also vaguely recalls Top Secret! the Zucker brothers spoof of Elvis Presley movies starring Val Kilmer as an Elvis-esque rock star who winds up in the middle of a spy plot involving East Germany. So after all that, why not Elvis the spy? It sounds like fun. I just hope they can use Elvis’ music on the show.

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