Elvis Presley, Batman villain Bane and the assassin from “Killing Eve” join a biker gang. 

It’s not the start of a joke but one way to shorthand the new movie “The Bikeriders,” which stars former big-screen Elvis Austin Butler, former mask-wearing bad guy Tom Hardy and streaming-series killer sensation Jodie Comer. 

Actor Austin Butler on what ‘Elvis’ taught him about fear

The film, which opens in Memphis on Friday, June 21, at multiple locations, is based on a cult-favorite 1968 book by photojournalist Danny Lyon, in which he embedded himself with a Chicago-area motorcycle gang to produce a collection of romantic black-and-white photographs and romance-undercutting interviews. 

But a lot of longtime Memphis music fans may already know the plot even if they’ve never seen Lyon’s book. 

Enter Lucero, the stalwart Memphis rock and roll band that’s been a local scene staple since the late 1990s.

“The Bikeriders” is also a circa 2005 song from the band’s fifth album, “Nobody’s Darlings,” in which bandleader and songwriter Ben Nichols sketches the relationship between two characters from Lyon’s book, Benny and Kathy, played by Butler and Comer in the film. 

This is less surprising when you know that “Bikeriders” is the sixth feature from writer-director Jeff Nichols, Ben’s younger brother, whose work also includes two films set in the brothers’ native Arkansas, the 2007 debut “Shotgun Stories” and 2012’s “Mud,” starring Matthew McConaughey. 

It’s the older brother’s fascination with “Bikeriders” that put the younger brother on the scent, and that connection first happened, as Ben remembers, when Jeff was visiting the band’s Midtown Memphis loft, the once and future karate studio memorialized in the title of Lucero’s 2009 album “1372 Overton Park.”

‘Elvis’ lands eight Oscar nods, including Best Picture

The younger Nichols recently shared this recollection in an interview with the film site Screen Rant: 

“My brother showed it to me. My big brother Ben, who’s in a band called Lucero, he’s always been the coolest one in the family and always had the coolest music and stuff. I found it on the floor of his apartment and was immediately taken by it. The reason I’m attracted to that book is because it’s a toolkit for how to portray a subculture.”

“We always talked about how great a movie would be if it looked like those photos,” said Ben Nichols, texting from the band’s current tour. “And he finally sat down and wrote the screenplay.”

Lucero’s “1372 Overton Park” includes two other songs based on the “Bikeriders” book: “Smoke” and “Johnny Davis,” the latter about the character played by Hardy in the movie.

You’ll hear Lucero’s “The Bikeriders” on the new film’s soundtrack.