‘Elio’: Chaotic Production Revealed Behind Latest Disney Pixar Bomb!!

This hasn’t been the best year for Pixar. The animation studio’s latest release, Elio, has failed to leave a mark at the box office, and even though critics and fans agree that the movie is worth your time – it landed an 82% score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and a whopping 91% audience score – insiders are new revealing the chaotic circumstances in which the Disney movie was brought to life.

Last week, The Hollywood Reporter unveiled some details from Elio‘s early days of production, and professionals who abandoned the project revealed that one of the aspects that was cut from the story was the fact that Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) was originally a queer-coded character. However, Disney executives reportedly weren’t too happy with that, and the title character started to get more masculine with each revised version. Again, according to insiders, that started to happen when test screenings indicated that audiences liked the movie but wouldn’t bother watching it in theaters.

In an official statement, former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich revealed that several people abandoned the project after it became clear that its themes were being watered down. She commented:

“I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made. 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.”

Adrian Molina and America Ferrera Exiting ‘Elio’ Was a Turning Point

One of the biggest exits from Elio was, of course, director Adrian Molina (Coco). The filmmaker abandoned it – allegedly to work on Coco 2 – and after a year-long pause, the animated movie was taken over by new directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi. THR also revealed that America Ferrera (Barbie), who was originally set to voice Elio’s mother Olga, decided to leave the project after Molina‘s exit, even though she had already recorded dialogue. The sources stated that Ferrera was “upset” with the lack of Latinx representation and with the numerous re-recordings due to script changes. She was replaced by Avatar‘s Zoe Saldaña.

This is not the first time that Disney and Pixar have come under fire for how they handle queer characters. Back in 2022, Pixar employees penned an open letter revealing that they were “disappointed, hurt, afraid, and angry,” with Disney‘s involvement in helping pass the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, as well as their attempts to dehumanize queer-coded characters seen in movies like Lightyear and Luca, and the straight-up removal of a transgender storyline in Pixar‘s animated series Win or Lose.