June 10, 2025 (El Capitan Theatre)
June 20, 2025 (United States)
Elio is a 2025 American animated science fiction adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina, and written by Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, and Mike Jones, from a story by Sharafian, Shi, Molina, and Cho, the film stars the voices of Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Brandon Moon, Brad Garrett, and Jameela Jamil. It follows an eleven-year-old boy named Elio Solis (Kibreab) who accidentally becomes the intergalactic ambassador of planet Earth after being beamed up to the Communiverse by aliens for making contact. He must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms and navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions.
Elio was conceived by Molina as a story about childhood and social isolation and was inspired by growing up at a military base and his eventual enrollment at the California Institute of the Arts. The film was officially announced in September 2022, with Molina attached to direct. Molina later left the project to work on Coco 2 (2029), and in August 2024, it was announced that Shi and Sharafian would replace him as the lead directors. The production team devised a process, titled the "College Project", to create the look of the space setting, Communiverse. Pixar's new Luna lighting toolset allowed for the team to more quickly define lighting and the film's overall aesthetic which was shot using a virtual anamorphic lens. Its musical score was composed by Rob Simonsen.
Elio premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on June 10, 2025, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 20, 2025. The film has received positive reviews from critics.
Storyline
After the death of his parents, a young Elio Solis lives with his Aunt Olga, an Air Force major who gave up her aspirations of becoming an astronaut to raise her nephew. Elio wanders off into a closed-off exhibit of the Voyager 1 spacecraft where he is awestruck by the notion of discovering other life in outer space.
Years later, Elio wishes to be abducted by aliens. Every day, he lies on the beach waiting, but without result. One night, two kids, Bryce and Caleb, tamper with his ham radio, leading to a fight that injures his left eye. This forces Elio to wear a patch over his eye for 2 weeks. At Olga's workplace, Elio sneaks into an emergency meeting where conspiracy theorist Gunther Melmac claims to have found evidence of aliens responding to Voyager, suggesting they send a message back, but is dismissed by Olga and her colleagues. Elio uses Melmac's device to send his message, causing a power outage at the military base, nearly costing Olga her job. Angered by Elio's actions, Olga decides to send him to a youth camp, which he dreads.
At camp, Elio escapes from bullies one night as they attempt to scare him. Back at the military base, Olga receives strange outer space messages in response to Elio. Just as Elio faces a beating, an alien ship arrives and abducts him. Inside the spaceship, he meets OOOOO, a liquid supercomputer, and is welcomed to the Communiverse where aliens share knowledge from their worlds. Other ambassadors mistakenly declare him a candidate for Earth's ambassador, thinking he created the Voyager spacecraft. Before Elio can clarify, they attend an emergency meeting with Lord Grigon, a rejected warlord threatening to take the Communiverse by force. The ambassadors plan to return Elio to Earth, but he chooses to negotiate with Grigon for immediate induction as an ambassador. OOOOO creates a clone of Elio to take his place back on Earth. Olga brings Other Elio home from camp after hearing about the prior fight.
Meanwhile, Elio attempts to negotiate with Grigon, but after unintentionally angering him, he is imprisoned. While trying to escape, he comes across Grigon's son, Glordon, and decides to use him as a bargaining chip to get Grigon to leave the Communiverse alone. They head back to the Communiverse, and Grigon agrees to leave them in peace in exchange for Glordon's safe return.
Elio and Glordon confide in each other: Elio feels alone and misunderstood by his aunt, while Glordon resists becoming a war machine like his father. Elio devises a cloning plan to keep them together. He puts the real Glordon on an escape shuttle and gives Grigon the fake one. Grigon notices the switch and uses Questa's mind-reading powers to locate them. Grigon sends troops to find his son, while Questa, saddened by Elio's deception, returns him home to evade Grigon. Meanwhile, Glordon accidentally activates the shuttle, heading toward Earth.
Back home, Elio is devastated but soon spots his aunt on the beach looking for him with Other Elio, whom she's already suspected wasn't the real Elio after seeing that Other Elio is missing his left eye under his patch. After reconciling, they head to the military base, where Elio's shuttle has been contained. After Other Elio sacrifices himself to distract the military, Elio and Olga sneak into the base to find Glordon dying in the shuttle. They pilot it back to the Communiverse, calling Bryce and Melmac for help avoiding space debris.
Reaching the Communiverse, they return Glordon to his father, who rips his suit open to swaddle him. Grigon apologizes to his son and the ambassadors and Elio is welcomed back as an ambassador. Elio declines stating Earth is his home and says goodbye. Questa reminds him he is never alone before sending him and Olga home.