Pixar faces backlash after cutting LGBTQ, Latinx content from ‘Elio'
'Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,' a former Pixar artist told the Hollywood Reporter in a story posted Monday, June 30.
The changes reportedly led to the departure of the animated feature's original director Adrian Molina and star America Ferrera.
'The 'Elio' that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian's best version of the original,' added the artist, who spoke to THR under anonymity.
Pixar suffered the worst opening weekend in its history with 'Elio,' which was released in theaters on June 20 and pulled in just $21 million in North America and $14 million overseas in its first three days. It earned an additional $10.7 million last weekend, but that's still a 49% drop for a film estimated to have cost between $150 million and $200 million.
'I'd love to ask Pete and the other Disney executives whether or not they thought the rewrite was worth it,' says the artist, referring to Pixar's Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter. 'Would they have lost this much money if they simply let Adrian tell his story?'
The studio, reacting to rejection by audiences, has taken to social media to call out fans and critics for not supporting original content.
Molina, who co-wrote and co-directed Pixar's 2017 hit ' Coco,' is an openly gay filmmaker whose original cut of 'Elio' reportedly included a sequence in which Elio, an 11-year-old boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens to escape his lonely life, collects trash on the beach and turns it into a pink tank top and shows it off to a hermit crab as his 'trash-ion show.'
Also eliminated was a scene in Elio's bedroom with pictures suggesting a male crush.
'Elio was just so cute and so much fun and had so much personality, and now he feels much more generic to me,' added another former Pixar staffer who worked on the film.
The film was delayed for about a year after a disastrous test screening in Arizona in 2023. The audience said they generally enjoyed the movie, but when asked how many of them would see it in a theater, not a single hand was raised, according to THR's report.
Molina also screened the film for Pixar leaders, including Docter, and the filmmaker was reportedly 'hurt' by the conversation that followed. Molina exited the project soon afterward and was eventually replaced by ' Turning Red ' director Domee Shi and East Bay native Madeline Sharafian.
Molina is still credited as co-director on the finished film.
Ferrera, who had already recorded dialogue as Elio's mother Olga, also left because 'America was upset that there was no longer Latinx representation in the leadership,' the former Pixar artist said.
In the reworked film, Olga, voiced by Zoe Saldaña, is now Elio's aunt who is raising him after his parents' death.
'I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made,' former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich, who provided feedback during the production as a member of the company's internal LGBTQ group PixPRIDE, told THR. 'The exodus of talent after that (original) cut was really indicative of how unhappy a lot of people were that they had changed and destroyed this beautiful work.'
It is unclear if executives at Disney, the parent company of Pixar, were involved in the changes, although the former Pixar artist said, 'A lot of people like to blame Disney, but the call is coming from inside the house.'
This is not the first time Pixar has faced controversy regarding queer content.
A same-sex storyline was reportedly removed from its 2021 film 'Luca.' When ' Lightyear,' an offshoot of the ' Toy Story ' franchise, hit theaters in 2022, conservative commentators slammed it for including a same-sex relationship and kiss, prompting bans in potentially lucrative Middle Eastern territories.
'Lightyear,' which featured Marvel's 'Captain America' star Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz Lightyear, severely underperformed at the box office, which may have led to the decisions made a year later during the production of 'Elio.'
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