Ludo Studio swaps animated dogs for a long-lost extraterrestrial best friend in Allen, a Queensland-set family comedy landing on Netflix on November 12.
The studio that made Australia’s most beloved cartoon dog family has produced a feature about a grown man and his extraterrestrial childhood best friend, and the Allen Netflix trailer is now out. The film arrives globally on November 12.
Ludo Studio, the Brisbane company behind Bluey, is the force behind Allen. Don’t expect Heelers this time. This is a live-action feature with real actors, real Queensland coastline and one very unexpected houseguest.
A very late reunion
The setup is neat, and a bit heartbreaking. Petey is a Queensland man whose best mate growing up was an alien called Allen. Then Allen vanished without a goodbye. Twenty years on, he turns up again, and he’s carrying a secret that could change the world.
That’s the sci-fi hook. The emotional one is Petey, who has to face his past and, in the film’s own phrasing, finally grow up if he’s going to help save the day. Anyone who has ever been ghosted by a childhood friend will feel that one in the chest.
T.J. Power plays Petey, with Edward A. O’Sullivan as the younger version. The cast around them includes Charlotte Nicdao, Josh Helman, Emily Barclay, Benedict Hardie, Kaipo Heke, Chaydon Jay and Danny Kim.
Home turf
The film comes from Daley Pearson, whose earlier credits include Talk to Me and The Strange Chores. He created Allen, co-wrote the screenplay with Sophie Miller (Thou Shalt Not Steal) and co-directs with Jeffrey Walker, who has Apple Cider Vinegar and The Artful Dodger on his résumé.
Production ran across Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and the coastal Queensland setting is personal. It draws on Pearson’s own upbringing. “Getting the opportunity to make this story in this part of the world – in the town where I grew up in, inspired by the friends and family I grew up with – is a dream,” he said when production was first announced.
He was also clear about the audience. “Allen is really a story about love, family and all those big and small moments from childhood that end up shaping who we are when we grow up,” Pearson said. “We’re creating Allen for families to watch together.”
What it says about Ludo
Ludo is an Emmy and BAFTA-winning company, and Bluey is the global hit that put it there. Allen is its first locally produced live-action feature film. That’s a notable jump from a series made for small children to a feature with a cast of adults and a story about growing up.
It isn’t Ludo’s first step outside animation, though. The studio has already made the Netflix crime drama Thou Shalt Not Steal, so it has live-action form. A family sci-fi comedy is a very different tone from a crime series, which shows how much ground the studio is willing to cover.
There’s a thread running through it, too. Bluey is built on childhood, family and the small moments that stick. Allen, by Pearson’s own description, is about the same things. The format changes, but the subject doesn’t.
Who’s behind it
Pearson and Charlie Aspinwall executive produce for Ludo, alongside Miller. Sam Moor and Ross Allsop are producers, and Lauren Brown is co-producer. The production had backing from the Queensland Government through Screen Queensland’s Production Attraction Strategy and its Post, Digital and Visual Effects Incentive.
So the trailer is out, the cast is set and the date is locked in: Allen lands on Netflix worldwide on November 12. If you grew up with a best friend who drifted away, you may want tissues nearby. A family movie night is the obvious plan, since the filmmakers made it for exactly that.
