An alien comes to Earth, befriends a child and disappears. The child grows older, but never quite recovers from the separation.
That is the starting point for Allen, the upcoming Netflix feature from Australian production company Ludo Studio.
The official trailer, released on October 27, 2026, reveals the film's blend of science-fiction spectacle, awkward comedy and emotional storytelling. Netflix has confirmed that the movie will premiere globally on November 12.
T.J. Power plays Petey, a Queensland man who spent his childhood with an extraordinary best friend named Allen. The visitor was an extraterrestrial who eventually vanished without an explanation or proper goodbye.
Two decades later, Petey still has not moved on.
His daily life has become organized around the memory of a friendship that everyone else expects him to leave behind.
Then Allen returns, and Petey discovers that getting his childhood back is considerably more complicated than he imagined.
An adult who never stopped waiting
The trailer establishes Petey as a man whose emotional life remains rooted in childhood.
He works in a shop and seems to have little enthusiasm for building a different future. Instead, he continues sending signals into space, hoping that Allen will hear them and come back.
His friends are increasingly frustrated by his inability to let go.
For Petey, however, the extraordinary friendship was not simply an unusual childhood experience. It was the defining event of his life.
The movie begins to change direction when an unidentified spacecraft arrives on a Queensland beach.
Allen has finally returned.
Their reunion immediately introduces a comic problem. The alien remembers a child, not the adult standing in front of him.
Petey must convince his old companion that he is the same person, despite having changed physically beyond recognition.
The moment captures the central tension of the premise. One friend has been waiting for an impossible reunion, while the other does not initially recognize the person he came to see.
Their shared history remains important, but restoring the exact friendship they remember may no longer be possible.
Allen has brought more than childhood memories
The official synopsis confirms that the alien's return carries a secret capable of changing the world.
The trailer offers glimpses of increasingly chaotic events around the coastal town.
Vehicles are overturned, strange energy effects appear and the authorities become involved as Petey attempts to understand what has brought Allen back to Earth.
His friends suspect that the alien did not travel across the galaxy simply to spend time with him.
Petey is reluctant to accept that possibility. For years, he has imagined the return as the happy conclusion to an unfinished childhood story.
The events surrounding Allen suggest that their reunion may instead mark the beginning of something much more dangerous.
Netflix has not revealed the nature of the secret or explained the larger threat facing the characters.
The trailer establishes the scale of the potential consequences without confirming whether Allen is directly responsible for the danger or trying to prevent it.
The film therefore combines an intimate emotional problem with a more conventional science-fiction mystery.
Petey must confront the possibility that his friend's return cannot repair the past and may require him to accept new responsibilities.
The makers of Bluey take a different creative direction
Ludo Studio is best known internationally for Bluey, the animated children's series that follows the everyday adventures of a young dog and her family.
The show's appeal extends well beyond its intended childhood audience. Its stories frequently address parenting, relationships and the emotional importance of seemingly ordinary moments.
Allen is a much larger production in visual terms, combining live-action performances with a computer-generated extraterrestrial character and science-fiction sequences.
It also represents Ludo Studio's first locally produced live-action feature film.
That distinction matters because the Australian company was already involved in live-action television. Its previous credits include Thou Shalt Not Steal, a crime comedy drama produced for Australian streaming service Stan.
The new film therefore marks an expansion into feature filmmaking rather than a complete departure from the studio's established capabilities.
What connects Allen with Ludo's broader creative identity is its interest in relationships.
The science-fiction premise provides the adventure, but the emotional center concerns two friends separated by time and a man struggling to move beyond childhood.
Creator Daley Pearson has described the film as a story about family, love and the experiences that shape people as they grow older.
Those interests are recognizable within Ludo's work, even though Allen is an original production unrelated to the Bluey universe.
Daley Pearson brings the story home to Queensland
Allen was created by Daley Pearson, who co-directs the film with Jeffrey Walker.
Pearson previously worked on The Strange Chores and Content, and contributed to the original concept that eventually became the Australian horror film Talk to Me.
For Allen, he wanted to tell a story connected to the place where he grew up.
The film is set in a Queensland coastal town, drawing inspiration from Pearson's childhood experiences and the people who shaped them.
He co-wrote the screenplay with Sophie Miller, whose credits include Thou Shalt Not Steal.
Walker brings additional filmmaking experience from projects including The Artful Dodger and Apple Cider Vinegar.
Principal photography began in July 2025, with filming in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
The production received support from the Queensland Government through Screen Queensland's production attraction and post-production incentives.
The coastal setting gives Allen a distinctly Australian identity rather than placing its extraterrestrial adventure in the more familiar American suburban environment often associated with family science-fiction films.
For Pearson, that location was a personal creative choice as well as a production decision.
Netflix will now distribute the result to audiences around the world.
T.J. Power leads the ensemble
T.J. Power plays the adult Petey, a character who needs to be simultaneously funny, frustrating and sympathetic.
His refusal to grow up provides much of the comedy, but it also reflects the genuine loss he experienced as a child.
Charlotte Nicdao, known for Mythic Quest, portrays Carly.
Josh Helman, whose credits include Mad Max: Fury Road and the X-Men film series, plays Jaden.
Emily Barclay appears as Sarah, while Benedict Hardie plays Rory.
The announced cast also includes Kaipo Heke, Chaydon Jay and Danny Kim.
Edward A. O'Sullivan portrays the younger version of Petey, allowing the story to revisit his childhood friendship with Allen.
The alien itself appears as a computer-generated character in the trailer.
His expressive appearance and awkward communication provide an important source of humor, particularly when he encounters the adult version of the boy he remembers.
The production has not disclosed every technical detail of the character's performance or the complete nature of the visual-effects work.
A familiar science-fiction idea with a new question
Allen naturally invites comparisons with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Steven Spielberg's 1982 film centered on the friendship between a young boy and a stranded alien, building an emotional adventure around their eventual separation.
Allen approaches a related idea from a different point in life.
Its central character has already experienced the extraordinary encounter. Instead of discovering an alien for the first time, he has spent twenty years waiting for that experience to happen again.
The movie is not connected to E.T. and does not operate as a sequel to Spielberg's film.
Its premise nevertheless raises a compelling question: what if the most exciting moment of someone's life occurred so early that everything afterward seemed disappointing?
Petey has allowed his memory of Allen to define what friendship and happiness should feel like.
The reunion may force him to reconsider that assumption, especially when the alien's arrival brings danger rather than a simple return to childhood.
The result promises a mixture of comedy and melancholy alongside the film's more spectacular adventure elements.
Whether those ingredients work together will become clear when audiences can see the complete movie.
Allen premieres worldwide on November 12
Netflix has confirmed a global release date of Thursday, November 12, 2026.
The official trailer was released on October 27, with coverage continuing across international entertainment publications on October 28.
The film expands Netflix's range of Australian productions and gives Ludo Studio an opportunity to establish its feature-film identity outside animation.
Unlike Bluey, Allen relies on live-action performances, visual effects and a science-fiction adventure premise.
But the fundamental emotional concern remains familiar: childhood experiences can shape the adults people become, sometimes in ways that make moving forward difficult.
Petey has finally received what he spent two decades wishing for. The question now is whether he can stop living in the past long enough to help his oldest friend in the present.
