When it opened last year, Pixar's Elio had an 83% Rotten Tomatoes score and 89% on the fan-generated Popcornmeter. Despite that, it still bombed with a disastrous $20.8 million opening weekend.
Elemental and Mufasa: The Lion King were similarly written off as flops, but the Pixar movie ultimately ended its run with a mere $154 million.
Last summer, it was reported that the movie we got was not the one the filmmakers originally intended to make. For example, there was a scene with Elio collecting trash on the beach and turning it into homemade apparel. That included a pink tank top, which, according to multiple insiders, was part of plans to portray him as a queer-coded character (to reflect original director Adrian Molina's identity as an openly gay filmmaker).
Molina had no plans for this to be a coming-out story as the title character is only 11, but Elio was made more masculine "following feedback from leadership." His love of environmentalism and fashion was dropped, as were any hints that he might have a male crush. Elio still wore trash, without explanation.
Rumour has it Molina was hurt by that and the feedback he received from Pixar boss Peter Docter, leading to him being replaced by new co-directors, Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi, shortly after. Molina was offered the chance to remain as co-director, but left as a continued series of sweeping changes were made to his original vision for Elio.
As we first reported on Toonado.com, The Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Pixar scrapped plans for Elio's title character to be portrayed as gay. Talking to the site, Docter put the creative overhaul down to a realisation that some parents do not want movies like this one to touch on topics they may not be ready to discuss with their children.
"We're making a movie," he stated, "not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy." That's seemingly a reference to Molina's desire to explore his own childhood experiences with sexuality through Elio.
The piece also confirms that a scene was cut with Elio raising a child in the future with a male crush. Docter's priority is reportedly making universally palatable movies rather than director-driven semi-autobiographical stories.
"As time's gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody," the Oscar-winning writer and director responsible for Up, Inside Out, and Soul shared. "If we’re going to just crank crap out, let’s shut the doors. I’d rather die trying to make something that we genuinely believe in."
For some, the fact that Molina's vision was essentially decimated by execs like Docter suggests that the studio is no longer the creative-driven/filmmaker-friendly force it once was. For others, the hope is just that Pixar will avoid hot-button topics and tell classic, still-impactful stories like this weekend's Hoppers.