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Just before Pixar celebrated their first big win of the year at the box office with \u201cHoppers,\u201d Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter explained why the company decided to cut the gay storyline in the original film \u201cElio\u201d last year.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHoppers\u201d is being lauded because it doesn\u2019t push any inkling of LGBT themes that have become quite common in animated films recently. \u201cElio,\u201d meanwhile, flirted with the idea, and it was widely considered to be a box office flop.<\/span><\/p>\n The original narrative included tidbits about former director Adrian Molina\u2019s experience growing up gay, as <\/span>reported by<\/span><\/a> The Wall Street Journal. But Docter said the studio opted to change it up because parents weren\u2019t necessarily ready to have those discussions with their young children watching the film.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,\u201d the Pixar exec said. \u201cAs time\u2019s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The film tells the tale of an 11-year-old boy, Elio, who bonds with aliens. The outlet noted that the original storyline showed Elio raising a child in the future with a same sex partner.<\/span><\/p>\n Upon its release, The Hollywood Reporter <\/span>described<\/span><\/a> Elio as a \u201cqueer-coded character\u201d whose \u201ccharacterization gradually faded away throughout the production process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n LGBT activists who worked on the film blamed these edits for its poor performance. \u201cSuddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,\u201d one former Pixar artist told THR. \u201cThe Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian\u2019s best version of the original.\u201d Another said the final character version was \u201cgeneric.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, there was speculation that \u201cElio\u201d never took off because those \u201cqueer coded\u201d themes were leaked to the media and parents were avoiding it.<\/span><\/p>\n After being understood as a hitmaker for years with beloved projects such as the \u201cToy Story\u201d franchise beginning in 1995, \u201cMonsters Inc\u201d (2001), \u201cFinding Nemo\u201d (2003), \u201cThe Incredibles\u201d (2004), \u201cUp\u201d (2009), \u201cInside Out,\u201d (2015), and a slew of others, Pixar, which was acquired by Disney in 2006, seemed to lose its way by going too niche. It produced sequels to some of its most popular titles, but also came up with out-of-the-box concepts like the controversial \u201cTurning Red\u201d (2022), a movie about puberty.<\/span><\/p>\n Then there was that whole \u201cLightyear\u201d <\/span>same sex kiss fiasco<\/span><\/a> in 2022, which proved that even Pixar films based on treasured IP weren\u2019t guaranteed to hit, especially if they included topics parents didn\u2019t want their kids to see.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n