Elio Elio

Disney and Pixar today released the trailer for Adrian Molina’s upcoming animated feature Elio, which will hit theaters on March 1, 2024.

Until now, everything we knew about the film came from a few sentences in a release and some stills shared at last year’s D23 Expo. Today’s trailer provides a much better look at what we expect next March. Some of the character design work looks especially fun.

Pixar has a bit of a mixed history with sci-fi films. 2008’s Wall-E is a much-loved modern classic, while last year’s Lightyear struggled to find an audience at the box office and didn’t have anywhere near the cultural impact of its Toy Story franchise counterparts.

Elio’s director Molina is best known as a screenwriter and co-director of Coco. That said, this will be his feature directorial debut leading a production, as the co-director title on Coco indicated a position in service to the director, not on equal footing. In any case, Pixar will surely be hoping that Molina can replicate some of Coco’s magic.

Perhaps bolstering the likelihood of that eventuality, Pixar’s Mary Alice Drumm, who worked with Molina as an associate producer on Coco, is producing.

Pixar’s Elio synopsis reads:

The original feature film introduces Elio, an underdog with an active imagination who finds himself inadvertently beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide. Mistakenly identified as Earth’s ambassador to the rest of the universe, and completely unprepared for that kind of pressure, Elio must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, survive a series of formidable trials and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.

In today’s announcement, it was also revealed that Jameela Jamil and Brad Garrett will join previously announced voice cast members America Ferrera and Yonas Kibreab. The companies also shared a new poster, seen below.

Elio
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Jamie Lang

Jamie Lang is the Editor-in-Chief of Cartoon Brew.