Pixar Shares Closer Look at Design and Inspiration of "Elio" Just Ahead of This Year's Academy Awards

Pixar's Elio is nominated for Best Animated Feature at this year's Academy Awards, with the studio giving us a closer look at some of the fun inspiration and production design that is featured in the project.

What’s Happening: 

• Pixar Animation Studio’s film, Elio, has been nominated for this year’s Academy Awards, with the film about an 11 year-old boy who desperately wants to be abducted by aliens, up for Best Animated Feature. 
• This marks the second nomination for director Madeline Sharafian and third for director Domee Shi, who previously won an Oscar for her short film, Bao. 
• The nomination also marks the first for director Adrian Molina, and producer Mary Alice Drumm. 
• One part of what makes Elio so special is the amount of sci-fi and horror references that are populated throughout the film. 
• Shi commented, “I remember how much fun I had watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but I also remember being scared by it too. At Pixar, our films tend to make people cry or laugh, so we thought this could be a great opportunity to get some thrills, some tension, and some gasps out of the audience.”
• The film gets inspiration and from other classics, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind - which features a musical tone that captures your attention. In Elio, the same idea is used leaving guests wondering, what is calling to Elio, and is it good or bad? 
• The Communiverse was also inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as well as The Muppets, with what Sharafian describes as “this absurdity, this silliness, but all this pompousness.” The Goonies, Return to Oz, and Labyrinth all also inspired some of the story elements featured in the film. 
• Ironically, playing a human in this film is someone who has played aliens across the cinematic worlds of Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Trek - Zoe Saldaña. Sharafian said that move was “all intentional.”
• While sci-fi films serve as inspiration for Elio, there are practically countless references to many films, including Terminator 2, and even the TV series, ALF. So many in fact, that the directors admit that “so many were snuck into the movie without us knowing about it.” Sharafian expanded, saying that “there is a PDF that has every single Easter egg listed, and I remember looking at it once and being like, ‘What? No Way!’”
• You can find out more about Elio from the cast and creatives in a new video, featured below. 

Awards Season: 

• Elio is nominated for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, but was also recently nominated in ten different categories at the recent Annie Awards - which celebrate all aspects in the art of animation. 
• Despite those many nominations, no trophies were awarded to Elio as it was consistently up against this year’s award season darling - K Pop Demon Hunters. 
• The same was true earlier this year at the Golden Globes, where Elio was once again nominated, with K Pop Demon Hunters taking home the trophy. 
• We’ll have to see what happens this year at the Dolby Theater when Conan O’Brian hosts the Oscars live on ABC and Hulu on Sunday, March 15, at 8:00 PM ET.