Adrian Molina

Adrian Molina is an American animator, storyboard artist, screenwriter and director. He is best known for his works at Pixar, including co-writing and co-directing Coco and Elio (2025). For the latter, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and a win for the Satellite Award for Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media.

Early life and education Molina was born in Yuba City, California to a Mexican family, and raised in Grass Valley. He graduated from Bear River High School in 2003, to subsequently attend and graduate from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007.

Career Molina joined Pixar in 2007. He started as a 2D animator on Ratatouille. He later moved on to be a storyboard artist, working on Toy Story 3 and Monsters University. After getting an additional screenplay material credit for both Monsters University and The Good Dinosaur, Molina started his first assignment as a screenwriter, for Coco, and later went on to co-direct the film. He also wrote several lyrics for the film.

In 2022, he served as an associate executive producer on the Academy Award-nominated Turning Red.

Following the success of Coco and the D23 Expo announcement in September 2022, Molina was announced to direct the 2025 film Elio. However in August 2024, it was announced that Molina had left the project, with Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi taking over the storywriting and directorial duties instead. Nevertheless, he retained his director credit on the film due to his heavy amount of work that he made. Reports in June 2025 suggested Molina left after studio demands for edits to remove the LGBTQ storyline from the film, with staff members crying when they learned of his departure.

In March 2025, during the Disney Shareholder Meeting, CEO Bob Iger announced that the sequel to Coco was in early development, with Molina returning from the original film.

Personal life Molina is gay. He has been married to Ryan Dooley since 2011.

Filmography Feature films

Pixar Senior Creative Team Toy Story 4 (2019) Onward (2020) Soul (2020) Luca (2021) Turning Red (2022) Lightyear (2022) Elemental (2023) Inside Out 2 (2024) Elio (2025) Hoppers (2026) Toy Story 5 (2026)

Short films

Accolades + Award Date of ceremony Category Film Result Annie Awards February 3, 2018 Directing in an Animated Feature Production CocoWon Music in an Animated Feature Production CocoWon Writing in an Animated Feature Production CocoWon Humanitas Prize February 16, 2018 Feature – Family Coco Imagen Awards August 25, 2018 Best Director CocoWon Academy AwardsMarch 15, 2026Best Animated FeatureElio