Have you heard about Disney/Pixar's new film Elio? No? It seems most people haven't. It's in theaters right now, and it's looking like it's about to become the biggest flop in all of Pixar's history.
Yes, a gay director named Adrian Molina, wrote the main character Elio, an 11-year-old boy, as a "queer-coded" character.
According to Hollywood Reporter, multiple insiders say "Elio was initially portrayed as a queer-coded character, reflecting original director Adrian Molina's identity as an openly gay filmmaker."
Other sources say that Molina did not intend the film to be a coming out story, as the character is 11. But either way, this characterization gradually faded away throughout the production process as Elio became more masculine following feedback from leadership. Gone were not only such direct examples of his passion for environmentalism and fashion, but also a scene in Elio's bedroom with pictures suggesting a male crush.
When the first cut received a test screening, however, no one in the audience said they would pay to see it in theaters.
The report than says the studio panicked, replaced the director, and took out the gay stuff. One anonymous Pixar employee said:
It was pretty clear through the production of the first version of the film that [studio leaders] were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio's sexuality of being queer.
What ended up in theaters seems to be a reworked corporate product that feels hollow because the pervert director made his entire film about a gay kid, and now it's about nothing.
Molina exited the project and woke Pixar staff think the movie suffered because the studio took out all the gay stuff.
'I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made,' says former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich, who provided feedback during Elio production as a member of the company's internal LGBTQ group PixPRIDE. Although she praises Sharafian and Shi as filmmakers, Ligatich notes that a number of creatives working on the film stepped down after the directors shared their first cut of the movie. '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.' Another Pixar source disputes that people stepped down in response to Molina's departure.
Elio only made $20.8 million domestically against a production budget of $150-200 million, shaping up to be Pixar's greatest flop.
The internet reacted to the news:
Can we be done with this now? Is this the last of the 2020-era trash? Let's hope so.
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