For Pixar Team, new space adventure 'Elio' is deeply personal

The new Disney Pixar movie "Elio" is about an 11-year-old boy who wants to be abducted by aliens because he feels like he doesn't fit in on planet Earth.

"I just want to belong somewhere," he says in a trailer for the upcoming animated adventure.

For many on the team who work at Pixar Animation Studios, like lighting art director Ernesto Nemesio, "Elio" is a deeply personal story.

"Especially being a first generation American here with Mexican parents, a lot of times there's language issues as a kid," Nemesio told On The Red Carpet. "You don't quite have the same culture, the same background. There's things that I like that neighborhood friends didn't like and so I think I can relate to Elio in that sense."

Part of what makes Elio's journey so unique is the universe the Pixar artists created for him to explore with every character and environment carefully crafted.

One of those aliens is the worm-like Glordon, who becomes Elio's unlikely companion on an intergalactic adventure.

"We made the aliens so diverse in a way so that, you know, the scary worm-like creature with all these teeth and no eyes becomes like Elio's best friend," said visual effects supervisor Claudia Chung Sanii. "Like, you wouldn't think that and that's something delightful and I hope the audience feels that."

For Oscar-winning production designer Harley Jessup, "Elio" is the final film in an illustrious career.

"We looked at a lot of space adventure films from the 70s, 80s and early 90s," Jessup told On The Red Carpet. "And I used to work at Industrial Light and Magic, so I worked on a couple of those films. They were inspiration. You know there's a whole tradition of family films set in space and you know, I hope that we can join 'E.T.' and 'Innerspace' and 'Close Encounters,' that we'll be part of that tradition."

"Elio" opens in theaters June 20.

The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of Pixar and this ABC station.