{"id":521958,"date":"2026-03-08T06:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T06:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/521958\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T06:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T06:12:08","slug":"were-making-a-movie-not-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/521958\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re making a movie,” not “therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Or, to put it in the man\u2019s own words: \u201cWe\u2019re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy.\u201d That quote comes up in the context, specifically, of\u00a0Elio<\/a>, the 2025 film that Docter ordered to be heavily, and expensively, retooled after test audiences were lukewarm on the idea of paying to see it, a process that ended up ditching LGBTQ themes, co-star America Ferrera, and, most notably, director Adrian Molina, who unhappily departed the project. (The resulting film, described by one former Pixar artist as a movie about \u201cnothing,\u201d<\/a> bombed anyway, it feels noting.) But that pushback on the personal is also just the general theme of the profile, which seems to suggest that Docter\u2014described as \u201cthe least assertive member of the braintrust,\u201d referring to the company\u2019s famed inner circle of decision makers during the Lasseter era\u2014went initially overboard in allowing his directors to make personal stories, before taking a hard pivot into something more aggressively commercial.<\/p>\n

Some of this, if we\u2019re being honest, feels a tad ideological: The WSJ\u00a0piece is very careful to note any time a recent Pixar project\u2014including Luca<\/a>,\u00a0Elemental<\/a>,\u00a0Elio, and the canceled Be Fri, which Disney ended up outright killing after seeing it as a work in progress\u2014was inspired by the director\u2019s youth. (They go a bit softer on Domee Shi\u2019s Turning Red<\/a>, maybe because Disney has at least succeeded in getting some merchandising money out of Shi\u2019s lockdown-era hit.) The article describes a \u201ccome to Jesus\u201d speech that Docter apparently gave to his staff sometime in the not-too-distant past, while also quoting him as saying stuff like \u201cI probably overindexed on, \u2018Do whatever you want,’\u201d and \u201cAs time\u2019s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.\u201d (And that\u2019s before you get into specific conversations about removing references to gay or trans characters in films like\u00a0Elio\u00a0or the Pixar TV series\u00a0Win Or Lose<\/a>, with Docter saying something to the effect that the studio realized \u201csome parents didn\u2019t want entertainment to force them to have a conversation they weren\u2019t ready for with their children\u201d\u2014i.e., the same tired line higher-ups at Disney have given for excising those elements.)<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, the studio\u2019s latest film, Hoppers<\/a>\u2014which reportedly had some of its pro-environmental messaging plucked out of it on the road to theaters\u2014is getting strong reviews, from both critics and audiences, at least in part for focusing on energetic slapstick wackiness instead of trying to make something more openly heartfelt. So, hey, maybe Docter is correct in this apparent course correction. (The film is expected to win the box office this week, hitting at least $40 million in expected profits.) Even so, it\u2019s kind of depressing to hear that \u201chundreds of millions of dollars of therapy\u201d quote come out of the guy ultimately responsible for some of the most emotionally intelligent animation in Hollywood, at a studio long held up as the\u00a0place where animators\u2014like, for instance, eventual Pixar studio head Pete Docter\u2014could make a genuine name for themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Or, to put it in the man\u2019s own words: \u201cWe\u2019re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-521958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}