{"id":511300,"date":"2026-03-08T14:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/511300\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T14:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:37:08","slug":"pixar-cco-pete-docter-on-lgbtq-themes-being-cut-from-elio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/511300\/","title":{"rendered":"Pixar CCO Pete Docter on LGBTQ Themes Being Cut From ‘Elio’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPixar<\/a>\u2018s chief creative officer Pete Docter<\/a> is explaining why the Disney<\/a>-owned company settled on cutting LGBTQ themes<\/a> from their 2025 film Elio<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn a new interview with the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Docter explained that Pixar did not want their film to force parents to have conversations they weren\u2019t ready to discuss with their children. \u201cWe\u2019re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hollywood Reporter previously reported<\/a> on the lengthy reworking of Elio, which spotlights the story of a\u00a0lonely boy who is beamed into outer spake after being mistaken as the leader of Earth. The film was originally slated to be directed by Adrian Molina, with the main character of Elio initially being portrayed a queer-coded. After an early screening in the summer of 2023 in Arizona, where viewers reportedly said they liked the movie but no one raised their hand when asked if they\u2019d see it in a movie theater, shifts followed.<\/p>\n

\n\tMolina later exited the project, as co-directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi stepped in to helm the film. A former Pixar artist who worked on Elio told THR anonymously, \u201cIt 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\u2019s sexuality of being queer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElio opened to record-low numbers<\/a> for Pixar, debuting to $20.8 million domestically and $14 million overseas. At the time, the film arrived as Pixar\u2019s first original film following Elemental, which debuted<\/a> to $29.6 million domestic in 2023, marking the second-worst three-day weekend start in the company\u2019s history. <\/p>\n

\n\tHoppers, which released Friday, is the first Pixar movie to trail Elio, with a projected global box office<\/a> debut of $88 million.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs time\u2019s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody,\u201d Docter said elsewhere in his WSJ profile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pixar\u2018s chief creative officer Pete Docter is explaining why the Disney-owned company settled on cutting LGBTQ themes from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3716,147503,88,231613,13774],"class_list":["post-511300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-disney","tag-elio","tag-entertainment","tag-pete-docter","tag-pixar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}