From The Muppet's 50th anniversary to Project Hail Mary's scene-stealing Rocky, 2026 has been a great year for weird, little puppets.
Now there's a new goggle-eyed friend on the block, courtesy of director Daley Pearson's (Talk To Me, The Strange Calls) debut feature film, Allen.
The titular goofy guy is a big-eared, short-statured alien who befriends Petey (Edward A O'Sullivan), a regular rough-and-tumble 10-year-old. Designed by award-winning creature wizard Steve Boyle (The Matrix, Anaconda), Allen was brought to life through a combination of traditional puppetry and digital effects.
"We knew we wanted Allan to be something a 10-year-old would pick up," Pearson says.
"Whereas something like E.T., the idea was that he's a little bit frightening, but you grow to love him. We sort of knew, knew we needed you to love Allan straight away."
Pearson has experience with lovable creatures as the co-founder of Ludo Studios, the Queensland studio behind Bluey. But Allen the alien isn't all he seems, and the movie goes places a family of talking sheepdogs could never.
"We also knew he needed to be very cute and appealing because the sort of midpoint, where the story takes Allen and the things he does, you need to keep loving him," Pearson says
