Pixar Boss Explains Why He Cut LGBTQ+ Scenes From ‘Elio’: ‘We’re Making a Movie,’ Not ‘Therapy’

Pixar boss Pete Docter has addressed the reason their 2025 animated flop Elio was reworked to remove LGBTQ+ themes originally in the story.

“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” Docter told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Friday, March 6, explaining that Pixar got feedback from some parents who complained about being forced to have conversations with their kids about sexuality before they were ready.

The film, which follows a lonely boy beamed into outer space after being mistaken as the leader of Earth, was originally directed by Adrian Molina, who based the story off his own childhood.

But after tepid responses from test screening audiences, Molina departed and Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi took over to oversee a number of changes, including references to a pink bicycle Elio owned and a scene in which he imagined raising a child with his male crush, a source told the Wall Street Journal.

The movie, which included Zoe Saldaña among its voice stars, opened to the lowest debut in Pixar history as per a Deadline report, pulling in just $20.8 million domestically. Despite eventually earning about $150 million worldwide, the pricey production — which also cost roughly $150 million to make — allegedly left Disney more than $100 million in the red.

As the National Enquirer reported last year, Snoop Dogg refused to apologize after saying that he was “scared to go to the movies” after watching the Pixar film Lightyear — in which two lesbians fall in love, get married and raise a child together — with his grandson, who asked questions that “I don’t have an answer for,” Snoop ranted on the It’s Giving podcast in August.

In December 2024, Entertainment Weekly reported that Pixar had dropped a storyline that would have featured a transgender character their long-form TV series, Win or Lose. While the character remained in the show, the plot changed completely to no longer be centered around her gender and it was also significantly cut down.

Pixar creatives and staffers have fought an uphill battle for many years when it comes to spotlighting LGBTQ+ characters and queer themes in its projects.

In 2022, as per a Guardian report, a group of Pixar staff signed a letter complaining about bosses cutting LGBTQ+ content from the films.