The 2025 animated extraterrestrial buddy flick Elio, perhaps best known for its underperformance at the box office, was dealt another blow in a recent Wall Street Journal interview with Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter.
While taking the fall for an unimpressive several years at the studio, during which sequels like Inside Out 2 have been its biggest hits, Docter said that Elio was overhauled after test audiences said they wouldn’t pay to see it in theaters, in hopes of turning it into a box-office success. The most significant changes were to elements, like a pink bicycle and daydreams about a future life with a male partner, that indicated the title character might be gay.
The film's original director, Adrian Molina, who developed the story based on his own childhood, left the project before it was released. Docter noted that the straight-washing of the film, like the Disney+ series Win or Lose, was worth getting viewers in seats.
“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” Docter told the Wall Street Journal, explaining that studio research indicated that parents were turned off by stories that might force difficult conversations.
In the interview, the writer-director behind Pixar hits Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out signaled that the company’s focus going forward would be on stories with mass appeal and the potential to generate multiple sequels. That direction comes in the fallout of what Docter, as well as current and former Pixar employees, framed as the conflict-averse chief creative officer greenlighting a string of semi-autobiographical stories from directors, like Elio’s Molina, despite the projects failing to connect with viewers.
“As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody,” Docter told the publication, contrasting franchise-spawning films like Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. with Luca and Turning Red, the first original movies made under his watch.
Although not all fans are happy about the renewed focus on universality over individuality, Docter, at least for now, seems to be on the path to realizing his most coveted aim: making Pixar invaluable to its parent company, Disney. Over the weekend, Pixar and Disney's Hoppers, about a young environmentalist who gets to know the animal world better by becoming a beaver, soared at the box office, earning over $40 million domestically and a much-needed win for the IP-obsessed animated studio.
