The coming-of-age tale now follows a lonely young boy living with his aunt (Zoe Saldaña) after the death of his parents, who dreams of being abducted by aliens. In that first teaser two years ago, his mother was still alive – and voiced by America Ferrera, no less – and he was far more terrified to be adducted after aliens made contact with the military base where she worked.
Elio isn’t the first Pixar movie to receive a behind-the-scenes shakeup, but co-directors Domee Shi (in her follow-up to Turning Red) and Madeline Sharafian had the daunting task of taking over a deeply personal project for Adrian Molina, partially inspired by his own childhood growing up in a military base. The Coco co-writer exited after believing he couldn’t crack the story and is now hard at work on the Coco sequel, with Shi and Sharafian given the daunting task of honouring the personal aspects of his narrative whilst transforming the plot entirely.
“This was the first time either of us had parachuted into a film halfway through production, so it took a minute for us to find our way into Elio as a character”, Shi told Zavvi. “Our eureka moment was amping up his nerdom, making him obsessed with space and wanting to live amongst aliens – it originated from a drawing I did in one of our story brainstorming sessions of the moment where he gets abducted, only now he was screaming “Yes!”
“We all loved this new characterisation and the way it felt like such a unique take on that familiar trope from sci-fi movies, the abduction scene. That’s where the story transformation started, as then we could dive in to why Elio wanted to be abducted by aliens and what he was running away from, and we could start rethinking his family relationships and backstory.”
The reinvented Elio remained true to how Molina had conceived him, but the little tweaks allowed him to become deeply personal for the rest of the team too.
Co-director Sharafian explained to Zavvi: “What helped us a lot jumping into this process is that, as movies are being made at Pixar, they’re screened to our “Brain Trust” creative team, so we had seen Adrian grow the narrative and characters over the years. We were familiar with his world, so when it became time for us to pick up the baton from him, no catch-up was needed.
“Domee and I were able to understand and relate to Elio because we understood how it feels to be the weird kid who is out of place and looking for connection. We were both artsy kids who didn’t find our people until we went to animation school, and now we both work at Pixar, surrounded by nerds, where we can finally be ourselves!”
As for Olga’s transformation from Elio’s mother to his aunt, the director duo sees this as the most pivotal decision that helped them crack the story.
Sharafian continued: “The idea was pitched by Julia Cho, who was Domee’s co-writer on Turning Red and one of the writers here, and it seemed like such a drastic idea when she put it forward, but we all caught on to it really fast, which was a sign that it was the right move.
“What we loved about it was that it made Elio’s life on Earth at the beginning of the film a lot more unstable, making you understand him better and even want to cheer him on as he gets abducted! It also makes the emotional arcs as the film continues a lot more impactful, as when it was Elio and his mother, you assume that due to the strength of their bond, there’s no tension as to how the film resolves – now you have two people who don’t know each other that well, where a single argument could end their relationship.
“If he didn’t have this journey, he might have grown up and kept Olga out of his life forever, moving out the second he turned 18 and never having the family that could have been. It added higher stakes to his journey and makes the third act so much more meaningful as that relationship isn’t a given.”
After Elio is abducted, he’s welcomed into a “Communiverse” of alienkind, who all believe he’s the ambassador of Earth. They don’t see that he’s a child, so when the warmonger Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) threatens to take over, he is tasked with negotiating for peace – luckily, he quickly becomes friends with Grigon’s young son Glordon.
That friendship gives Elio the companionship he felt he was missing on Earth, but it also put a major obstacle in place for the Pixar team. How can you create an alien who is both adorable and creepy at the same time?
Producer Mary Alice Drumm, who had been developing the project since its inception, told Zavvi that the film aimed to lean away from the sci-fi stereotypes of space being a terrifying place, which made bringing a villain to life the biggest challenge.
“For the aliens, we were working with our Production Designer Harley Jessup, who has worked on Ratatouille and Coco and has such a great sensibility. When we knew that the Communiverse would be the most magical, beautiful place that Elio would want to go to, we realised we’d need to learn into friendly, warmer aliens, which I think is unusual for the genre.
“Space is typically depicted as scary, with mean aliens, and now we had to look at how appealing each alien was and reduce anything that was too scary. Grigon was the most difficult design, and the character we had the most back and forth on; he’s the closest thing to a villain, but we wanted to lean into the warmth and friendliness of these aliens.”
“The hardest thing for me was having to pull myself back, as my personal aesthetic is to go a little bit more extreme”, Shi added. “But that’s what audience previews are for – you test it with a crowd and you hear the reactions, and that’s when I realised I should be turning down the sound effects and downplaying all the screams and growls!”
With Elio now ready to be released into the world and Molina hard at work on Coco 2, is Drumm returning to that world after producing the first?
“No, I’m jealous I’m not going to be on it, because I know it’s going to be a great movie! We’re all huge fans of the original, and it’s very early days on the sequel so far, so all I can tell you is that the three of us are extremely excited to see it.”
Elio is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 20th June.
