Pixar Executive Explains Why LGBTQ Content Was Cut From Elio
The studio removed gay-coded elements to avoid forcing parents into conversations they weren't ready to have with their children.
Pete Docter, Pixar’s chief creative officer, has revealed why the studio erased allusions to the title character’s LGBTQ identity from the 2025 animated film Elio.
The film follows the title character, a lonely boy who is beamed into outer space by an intergalactic organization after being mistaken for Earth’s leader. Pixar had originally hired openly gay director Adrian Molina — the co-director of the studio’s Oscar-winning 2017 hit Coco — to helm the film, which he based on his own childhood.
While the original version of Elio didn’t explicitly mention the title character’s sexual orientation or show him coming out, Molina included small hints that the 11-year-old protagonist was gay. In one scene, Elio staged a “trash-ion show,” wearing a pink tank top made from garbage. In others, he rode a pink bike and daydreamed about raising a child one day with a male crush.
The allusions to LGBTQ identity were ultimately cut from the film, with Elio presented in a more traditionally masculine way. References to his “passion for environmentalism and fashion” were also erased, and entire scenes were removed.
The changes were ordered by studio executives after a 2023 test screening in which viewers said they liked the movie. But when asked how many would see it in a theater, no one raised their hands — setting off panic among Pixar higher-ups, including Docter.
In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Docter said the LGBTQ themes were removed from Elio because Pixar did not want the film to cover topics children either weren’t prepared for or hadn’t discussed with their parents.
“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” Docter told the newspaper, adding that “some parents didn’t want entertainment to force them to have a conversation they weren’t ready for with their children.”
He added, “As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”
Ultimately, Elio opened to record-low numbers for Pixar, debuting to just $20.8 million domestically and $14 million overseas. The film went on to earn $150 million worldwide but also cost $150 million to produce, not including global marketing expenses. According to The Wall Street Journal, Pixar’s parent company Disney lost about $100 million on the movie.
Some critics argued that removing the film’s gay-coded references may have contributed to its box office failure, saying the alteration of Elio’s personality and identity resulted in a less coherent film. The drastic changes led some creatives working on the project to step down, with Molina eventually departing and being replaced by co-directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi.
“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,” former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich, who provided feedback on the film as a member of the company’s internal LGBTQ group PixPRIDE, told The Hollywood Reporter last year.
As Justin Carter noted in a piece for Gizmodo, Pixar films have previously explored potentially heavy or controversial themes, including becoming a widower, speculation about characters having extramarital affairs, the complications of adoption, preteen emotions run amok, running away from home, environmental collapse, existential dread, motherhood, and job burnout.
“Suffice to say, Pixar specializes in playing therapist or mediator for many things parents probably wouldn’t want to chat about with their young’uns,” Carter wrote. “Docter’s comment sucks, and illustrates how empathy and personhood only goes so far.”
Pixar has previously been accused of censoring or removing LGBTQ characters and content from its projects. When parent company Disney faced internal backlash from LGBTQ employees over its initially neutral stance on Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Pixar employees blasted Disney and accused the company of deliberately axing LGBTQ content.
Thus far, the only explicitly LGBTQ-focused work released by Pixar is the short film Out, in which a man preparing to move in with his boyfriend struggles to come out to his parents when they drop by for a surprise visit. The film was not released theatrically, instead premiering on the Disney+ streaming platform.
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