Reports: 'Elio' Coulda, Woulda Been Queer, but Pixar Quashed It

By now it's a too-familiar story: Pixar creatives with a queer vision are overruled by studio execs wary of LGBTQ+ representation. The latest victim of homophobic censorship is, reportedly, box-office flop "Elio."

The Hollywood Reporter detailed that Adrian Molina, the openly gay director originally slated to helm the film, didn't want to make "Elio" "a coming out story, as the character is 11," but he still envisioned the character as playfully queer-coded.

One example: A scene that Pixar staffers found especially charming in which the character "collected trash on the beach and turned it into homemade apparel that included a pink tank top," THR relayed, adding, "the movie's team would refer to Elio showing this off to a hermit crab as his 'trash-ion show.'"

But that was summarily scrubbed by studio suits. The resulting "self-censorship" of a film that was almost finished when the work Molina had done was subjected to extensive revision and Molina himself departed the project might be the very thing that hollowed the movie out, AV Club theorized, and "resulted in a movie that lacked substance."

To be sure, the end result was utterly sanitized for a hetero gaze. "Gone were not only such direct examples of his passion for environmentalism and fashion," THR reported, "but also a scene in Elio's bedroom with pictures suggesting a male crush."

The story fits with an emerging pattern of queer-averse decision-making at the animation studio, which reports last year indicated had taken pains to stamp out any queer sparks that may once have lit up the smash hit "Inside Out 2." IGN wrote at the time, "Sources describe rumors that there was special care put into making the relationship between Riley and Val, a supporting character introduced in 'Inside Out 2,' seem as platonic as possible, even requiring edits to the lighting and tone of certain scenes to remove any trace of 'romantic chemistry.'"

Moreover, company insiders said that Pixar execs made a scapegoat of the queer kiss in "Lightyear" that was lopped out, then restored when an outcry resulted. Overlooking the obvious flaws in "Lightyear," Pixar suits reportedly laid the blame for audiences staying away on that fleeting moment.

It's an excuse that seems especially flimsy when one recalls that another Pixar project, 2022's "Luca," was seen by some to have had undercurrents of romantic affection between the title character and his friend Alberto – a sweet tension that made the movie a hit with queer audiences and certainly didn't hinder its trajectory as a hit release.

Reports about "Luca" indicated that the team behind the film were looking to include a queer character... though without actually making them queer.

"We very often came up against the question of, 'How do we do this without giving them a love interest?'" one employee said in remarks about the film to Variety.

The film's director, Enrico Casarosa, told The Wrap it stemmed from a metaphor about friendship and race, rather than friendship and sexuality, as well as "how many different ways as kids we can feel like outsiders."

Even though "Luca" lost any queer sensibilities it might once have had, "it's so wonderful and even more powerful for the LGBTQ+ community who has felt so much of as an outsider," Casarosa told The Wrap.

Unless, of course, a movie that appeals to queer ticket-buyers is seen as not so wonderful. Such was evidently the case when Pixar bosses reportedly got nervous about a trans storyline in its TV series "Win or Lose," a show focusing on various young members of a baseball team – one of whom was intended to be depicted as transgender. In a last-minute switch-up, the show axed that representation, subbing in a devoutly Christian character instead – a change that happened "amid a wider cultural shift toward conservativism, in tandem with the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term in office," Newsweek noted.

Pixar has been internally roiled before over queer-exclusionary changes ordered from the top, but "Elio" sounds like it might have been a particularly tough case. "I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made," said Sarah Ligatich, who THR described as a "former Pixar assistant editor... who provided feedback during 'Elio' production as a member of the company's internal LGBTQ group PixPRIDE."

Added Ligatich: "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."

(THR noted that "Another Pixar source disputes that people stepped down in response to Molina's departure.")

"After Disney's 'Don't Say Gay' fights and the homophobic outrage surrounding 'Lightyear,' some presume that Pixar is erasing anything that could be construed as gay subtext from their movies before Disney even asks them to," AV Club noted.

All of this seems puzzling given how Pixar made space for a lesbian character, voiced by Lena Waithe, in 2020's "Onward," and sparked joy with the short film "Out," a body-swap comedy in which a man risks alienating everyone he loves to stop his parents finding out he's gay.

Are the developments of recent years truly indicative of a focused effort among Pixar's execs to "cleanse" the studio's projects of any queer traces? Or are these examples merely a cluster of blips in an elongated wrinkle that only happens to look homophobic?

Either way, in the case of "Elio," the damage has already been done. THR quoted one Pixar insider 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."

It wasn't just the movie's thematic elements that suffered, but the title character himself – never a good thing, given that the character from whose point of view a story is told is the one who usually serves as the audience's stand-in.

"Elio was just so cute and so much fun and had so much personality," THR quoted one Pixar insider lamenting, "and now he feels much more generic to me."