Disney Allegedly Stripped the Queer Out of "Elio" Like "Inside Out 2"
It seems the changes to Disney / Pixar’s latest film “Elio” were much more severe than we thought. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the character was “queer-coded” to reflect the original director Adrian Molina, who is openly gay. However, Molina did not intend that to be the case as the character is only a child.
However, THR claims that Elio was meant to be a lot less masculine than he ended up being portrayed. As with “Inside Out 2” the leadership steered the story away from scenes of Elio having pictures on his wall that suggested a male crush or his flair for fashion.
One scene that was cut was Elio finding trash on the beach and turning it into a pink tank top that he modeled for a crab. The team called it his “trash-ion show.” While it was toned down, the use of trash for “fashion” is still included in the film, but not addressed.
An early screening seemingly led to massive changes after Pixar CCO Pete Docter gave feedback that reports say hurt Molina’s feelings. From there Molina was switched out for co-directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi. Although reports say that Molina was given the opportunity to co-direct with Sharafian, but declined.
Employees involved indicated that this change let to others stepping down from the project.
Molina eventually ended up on “Coco 2” as he was a co-director on the first film.
“Elio” went on to fail at the box office, but it seems people behind the film are seemingly blaming the removal of his sexuality as a reason for the failure because it became “about totally nothing”.
According to THR a “former Pixar artist” said,
“Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing. The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.”
Yet another unnamed staffer says,
“Elio was just so cute and so much fun and had so much personality, and now he feels much more generic to me.”
It was also eluded that Disney / Pixar leadership moved the film away from identity politics and more into general territory. With another person saying,
“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.”
The article also claims that the tales of the $200-$300 million budget for “Elio” are true.
“Media reports have cited its production budget as $150 million, but former Pixar employees tell THR that the film cost far more than that. The artist who worked on the movie was not privy to the specific figure but estimates it was well north of $200 million, given that Molina’s version was nearly complete, which she says makes the “catastrophic box office” feel worse.”
”Elio” has only made about $42 million domestically and it is at about $72 million globally. If the budget was say $200 million, the film needs to bring in at least $400 million to break even and it’s not looking good.
I do not believe that putting identity back into a movie about a child would have saved the box office. It would have likely caused it to crash worse than it did. If the movie is nothing without those “moments” then the character is only his sexuality and that is equally disappointing.
Either way, it’s not looking good for “Elio.”