Pixar’s latest film, Elio, flopped at the box office last month, marking the studio’s worst-ever opening weekend. Now, its creatives say there’s one person to blame: Pixar CEO Pete Docter.
Multiple anonymous insiders who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter claimed the title character was “queer-coded” in the film’s original cut, until Docter nixed the idea.
According to THR’s sources, who describe themselves as current and former creatives at Pixar, the original version of Elio was partially inspired by the childhood of its director, Coco co-director Adrian Molina, an openly gay man.
However, Molina departed the project in 2023. Pixar credited his departure to scheduling conflicts with a “priority project,” and later announced he would return as co-director for Coco 2.
Insiders tell a different story, claiming Molina left shortly after a disastrous test screening in which audiences said they enjoyed his cut of Elio, but unanimously agreed would not buy tickets to see it in the theaters. Molina then reportedly screened his cut for Pixar executives, including Docter.
Shortly after that screening, Docter announced that Elio was being reworked and would be co-directed by Turning Red director Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, who had served as a storyboard artist on both Elio and Shi’s previous film.
While accounts vary on what exact instructions Docter gave to Shi and Sharafian, Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich told THR that several artists working on Elio left the production after seeing the co-directors’ first cut.
One of the creatives who insiders say quit after Molina’s departure is Oscar nominee America Ferrera, who was originally cast as Elio’s mother, Olga. The role eventually went to Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña.
While Ferrera attributed her 2023 departure to scheduling conflicts, one source told THR that in fact, the actress had already started recording dialogue.
The source says Ferrera grew frustrated with the constant script changes after Molina’s departure, and eventually expressed her disappointment that, “There was no longer Latinx representation in the leadership.” Ferrera declined to comment for THR’s story.
“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,” said Ligatich. Another Pixar employee told the outlet that the exodus was a response to Molina leaving the project, not Shi and Sharafian’s cut.
However, a third source, who worked as an artist at Pixar during this period, says the two motives for this exodus were related. “It was pretty clear through the production of the first version of the film that [Pixar executives] were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio’s sexuality of being queer,” the artist explained.
Some insiders attributed these orders to Disney, which owns Pixar and previously generated controversy among employees over then-CEO Bob Chapek’s delayed response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
However, others say the issue came from Pixar executives “obeying in advance,” scrapping queer storylines before Disney executives gave any orders. Pixar weathered a similar controversy just last year, when reports emerged that the protagonist of its Disney+ animated series Win or Lose, who was written as transgender, had been rewritten as cisgender.
Regardless of who was responsible, the Pixar artists say removing Elio’s queer themes effectively destroyed the film’s messaging. “Elio was just so cute and so much fun and had so much personality, and now he feels much more generic to me,” one artist told THR.
The film’s tragic box office numbers seemed to reflect this: Elio made just $20.8 million domestically in its opening weekend, coming in nearly $10 behind initial projections. While some of its failure can be attributed to the fact that it was competing with major children’s franchise entries like Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, its animators have another theory about why it flopped.
“Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,” the former Pixar artist told THR.
While the artist didn’t confirm whether it was Molina’s departure or Shi and Sharafian’s toned-down vision behind the exodus of creatives, they did add, “The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.”
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