Directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi discuss the Pixar sci-fi adventure’s circuitous route to the screen - including creative leadership changes, an actors’ strike, key story shifts and a condensed production schedule - via a path that has led to multiple Annie, VES, PGA and Critics Choice Awards nominations.
Though the film was released last June, Disney and Pixar’s Elio has been anything but out of sight and mind, snagging multiple Annie Awards, VES Awards, PGA Awards, Art Directors Guild, Critics Choice Awards and Gold Globes nominations as it heads into the final Oscar nomination voting period.
Directed by Madeline Sharafian (Burrow), Domee Shi (Turning Red, Bao) and Adrian Molina (Coco, upcoming Coco 2), and produced by Mary Alice Drumm (Coco, Brave), the film tells the story of Elio, (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), an 11-year-old space fanatic with an active imagination and a huge alien obsession… his biggest wish is to get abducted by aliens. So, when he’s beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide, Elio’s all in for the epic undertaking. Mistakenly identified as Earth’s leader, Elio must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions, and somehow discover who and where he is truly meant to be… back home on Earth.
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The project’s journey to the screen was neither straightforward nor insulated from broader industry realities – personnel changes, a strike, and ever tightening schedules. Elio’s circuitous path from original idea to final pixels ultimately helped sharpen the film’s emotional focus and reaffirm Pixar’s exemplary collaborative filmmaking culture.
Elio began as one of three ideas pitched by Molina, who initially conceived the project as a story built around displacement and identity. As Sharafian recalls, Molina’s original concept posed a simple but resonant question: “What if Earth’s weirdest kid is accidentally abducted by aliens and has to pretend he’s the leader of the world?” The premise quickly stood out internally, offering both comedic potential and emotional contrast. During early development, Sharafian and Shi were already tracking the project’s progress, attending internal screenings held roughly every three months. “We had been watching the movie grow and knew the characters and the world really, really well,” Sharafian says, which gave them an unusual level of familiarity with the film before formally stepping into leadership roles.
A major turning point came when Molina stepped away from Elio to begin work on Coco 2, the sequel to the studio’s 2017 Oscar-winning film. At nearly the same time, the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes delayed production schedules across the industry, pushing Elio’s release timeline and creating an unexpected opportunity. “We had a lot of extra time because the strikes were happening at that moment, which pushed the release date,” Sharafian explains. Rather than simply holding the course, Pixar leadership encouraged a deeper re-evaluation of the story. “Pixar is so determined to squeeze every last bit of perfection into a film that they possibly can,” she adds. “When we had that extra time and the chance to revamp the story, they were basically like, ‘Just go for it.’”
That mandate led Sharafian and Shi to revisit the emotional engine of the film, particularly the motivations driving the young Elio. Shi describes a key change that helped unlock the story’s direction: “What if the world’s weirdest kid was abducted by aliens - but what if he’s always wanted to be abducted by aliens?” The adjustment shifted Elio from a passive participant in his own story to an active dreamer pursuing escape and belonging. Drawing on her own history, Shi notes, “We added that drive based on our own personal experiences, being nerdy, obsessive kids growing up who dreamed of going to animation school and wanted to find our people.”
Taking over a feature already in progress presented challenges distinct from developing a film from the ground up. For Shi, previous directing experience proved invaluable. “Working on Turning Red definitely made me more comfortable with chaos,” she says. “I was expecting it more this time because I’d done it before.” Still, taking over a project midstream required adjustment. “It was the first time either of us jumped onto a project that had already started,” she shares. “I didn’t help conceive it from the very beginning, and it took me a minute to find my way into the story and into Elio as a character.”
Sharafian, directing her first feature, faced a different set of pressures. Accustomed to the relative privacy of story work, she found the transition to directing both public and intense. “I was used to succeeding quietly as a story artist,” she says. “Directing a feature for the first time - on a short timeline, in front of hundreds of people, including Pete Docter - meant constant failure in public.” While difficult, the experience ultimately proved transformative. “I understand now that this is normal. I left the project feeling tougher and better for it.”
As the pair took over the production, now compressed schedules shaped not only the film’s development but also the directors’ working relationship. “It really forced us to be collaborative and communicative, because we had no time,” Shi says. Sharafian adds, “We had no choice but to delegate. We had to trust each other and the team completely.” Their workflow often involved dividing responsibilities and reconvening daily to compare progress. “We’d be working in separate edit rooms with different editors and then show each other what we’d been doing at the end of the day,” Shi describes.
As the partnership evolved, creative responsibilities were divided along natural lines. “Domee gravitated toward the genre-heavy, sci-fi elements - especially the clone scenes and the action,” Sharafian says. “I focused more on the emotional grounding, the abduction, and the Earth-based material.” For Shi, the opportunity to work in science fiction represented new creative territory. “It was our first time making a sci-fi movie, so I was really excited to play in that genre.”
At the heart of Elio, both directors emphasize, is a clear emotional framework rooted in classical storytelling. Sharafian describes the structure as almost fairy-tale in nature: “A child leaves home dissatisfied, enters a new world, and returns with a new appreciation for home. Elio has to hate Earth at the beginning and choose Earth at the end.” Achieving that arc required careful balance. “We wanted the audience to agree that returning home was the right choice, even though space is amazing,” she continues. “That was hard, and we didn’t get it right immediately. A lot of the notes we would get would be like, ‘Why doesn't he just stay in space? It's great.’ And we'd be like, ‘Oh shoot, we didn't get it right.’”
Shi points to Elio’s relationship with Olga as essential to grounding that journey. “At the beginning, he feels unloved, and by the end he feels wanted and connected,” she says. “That emotional journey had to land for the movie to work, and it was something we always came back to when we were stuck.”
Sharafian, reflecting on challenges she faced stepping into a leadership role on a Pixar, admits, “The trust they placed in us felt terrifying at first. But now I see it as genuine belief - from Adrian, from Pete, from Domee. People believed I could do it even when I didn’t.” Shi underscores the supportive nature of that trust. “Pete was in the trenches with us,” she says. “It never felt like, ‘Here you go, good luck.’ He was in edit with us, cracking the opening with us. It was a shared experience.”
The intensity of that collaboration also extended to the practical realities of making creative decisions late in production. As Sharafian notes, the team was often balancing ambition against feasibility. “Sometimes it’s about telling people, ‘Wait, wait - save your energy,’” she says. “The simplest choices can save enormous time and resources.” Shi agrees, emphasizing that knowing when not to push further was as important as knowing when to take creative risks. “Pixar artists can do anything,” she says. “The challenge is sometimes holding them back until the idea is ready.”
Rather than framing Elio as a generational handoff, both directors describe the project as part of a continued studio evolution. Pixar continues to develop original stories amid an increasingly competitive animation landscape, and Elio reflects an effort to balance narrative and visual experimentation with the studio’s time-tested expertise in emotional storytelling and collaborative production. “Pixar’s first movie, Toy Story, was made in direct response to trends in animation at the time,” Shi concludes. “That spirit of doing something different is what we want to foster, celebrate, and carry forward.”
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
