The version of “Elio” that hit theaters on June 20 is not the same movie that Adrian Molina, the film’s original director, intended to put out.
Pixar removed LGBTQ+ elements from the animated feature after receiving negative feedback from test screenings with audience members and executives, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The film follows an 11-year-old boy named Elio who is mistaken for Earth’s ambassador by aliens and is beamed up to the Communiverse — an intergalactic organization — to represent the planet.
Trouble began in the summer of 2023 during a test screening in Arizona. After the film was over, audience members were asked to raise their hand if the movies was something they’d pay to see in theaters. No one did, causing Pixar executives to worry.
According to THR, Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter informed Molina after a separate screening for company executives that storyboard artist Madeline Sharafian would be promoted to co-director. Molina, who is gay, was given the option to co-direct the film with Sharafian but chose to exit the project instead after his original vision was changed. Shortly after, Docter announced internally that “Turning Red” director and co-writer Domee Shi would join “Elio” as co-director.
Changes to the film included getting rid of a scene in which Elio shows off a pink tank top made out of beach litter to a hermit crab, as well as removing picture frames from Elio’s bedroom wall that displayed a male crush. Executives also asked him to make the main character more “masculine.”
“I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made,” former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich, who was a member of the company’s internal LGBTQ+ group and provided feedback during the production of “Elio,” told THR.
Ligatich added that a number of creatives working behind the scenes left after the new directors went in a different direction.
“The exodus of talent after that cut was really indicative of how unhappy a lot of people were that they had changed and destroyed this beautiful work,” she said.
Actor America Ferrera was originally attached to the project as the voice of Elio’s mother, Olga. Following Molina’s departure, the “Barbie” actor left the production because the film lacked “Latinx representation in the leadership.” The character was later changed to be Elio’s aunt and was voiced by Zoe Saldaña.
In March 2025, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger announced Molina would return as co-director for “Coco 2,” a follow-up to the 2017 film he co-wrote and co-directed.
“Elio” earned Pixar its worst domestic opening after it premiered on June 20. he film made $21 million at the box office and currently holds a “fresh” 83% critics rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes.
“The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original,” a former Pixar staffer who worked on the film told THR.
“[The character] 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 Pixar staffer.
In a 2018 interview with the Huffington Post, Molina said he was “all for it” when asked what it would take for an animated studio to green light a story with a queer protagonist.
The Times reached out to Pixar for comment, but the studio did not respond.
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