Pixar boss slammed for response to Elio’s queer themes being cut: ‘Unbelievably grim’
Pixar boss Pete Docter has been slammed for his explanation of queer subtext being cut from Elio. (Pixar/Getty)
Pixar boss Pete Docter is under fire for a remark he made about the decision to cut LGBTQ+ representation from the studio’s sci-fi adventure flick, Elio.
Released in 2025, Elio features an eponymous 11-year-old who, after attempting to make contact with aliens, is beamed up to interplanetary organisation the Communiverse and mistaken for being Earth’s intergalactic ambassador. While there, he becomes friends with young aliens and has to take the reins in dealing with an interstellar crisis.
Yet according to multiple people who worked on the Disney Pixar animation, small nods to Elio being a “queer-coded” character, including him using a pink bike, turning trash he’d collected into a pink tank top, and having photos of his male crush in his bedroom, were cut from the movie.
The decision first came to light in 2025, with one former Pixar artist telling The Hollywood Reporter that details alluding to Elio being queer were gradually “sanded down” and he became “more masculine”, following instruction from Pixar bosses.
Elio was originally directed by gay filmmaker Adrian Molina, but in 2023, an overhaul of the film was ordered, and Molina left the project. The final product, directed by Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi, wipes away any inference that Elio is gay.
Asked about the decision to cut suggestions that Elio could be queer from the film, Pixar’s chief creative officer Pete Docter stated that the studio had received feedback from some parents that they did not want a movie to force them into conversations they weren’t ready to have with their children.
“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on 6 March.
Over the weekend, Docter’s remark was met with intense backlash on social media.
“It is getting unbelievably grim for queer people. Again,” one user wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
While the user didn’t expand on their comment, it’s clear that LGBTQ+ representation in media is suffering. Numerous filmmakers, actors and creatives have implied that studios are fearful of including queer themes in Donald Trump’s age of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) rollbacks, while according to GLAAD, more than four in ten queer characters on screen between 2024 and 2025 won’t be back on screens this year.
“Pixar hasn’t made a Great film in years and then blaming LGBTQ themes for the lack of success instead of acknowledging how corporate, soulless, lazy and juvenile the general output of Pixar’s past decade of work has been sure feels convenient,” another X user wrote.
“Look I understand you’re going to cut gay themes from the films, but I wish you wouldn’t try to explain to us why. It just ends up hurting more,” a third wrote, with a fourth adding: “I feel so sorry for queer kids”.
Others pointed out what they deemed to be Docter’s hypocritical stance. The Pixar boss is best known for writing and directing one of the studio’s best-loved films of this century, 2015’s Inside Out. The coming-of-age movie focuses on the inner emotions of Riley, a young girl who struggles with her emotions as her family relocates. The plot is based loosely on Docter’s daughter and how her personality changed as she grew older.
“The guy who directed Inside Out suddenly develops an aversion to therapizing in kids movies. alright man,” one person wrote on social media.
Another added: “Extremely embarrassing coming from the guy who made a whole movie about the inner workings of a kid’s head.”
Docter’s comment marks another chapter in Disney and Pixar’s long-running aversion to including LGBTQ+ content in its animated movies and series.
In late 2024, it was revealed that a trans character’s gender identity had been entirely erased from Disney softball series Win or Lose, while films including Inside Out 2 have reportedly seen LGBTQ+ themes being stripped or toned down.
In 2022, a letter from a group of LGBTQ+ Pixar employees claimed that “nearly every moment of overtly gay affection [in Pixar’s films] is cut at Disney’s behest”.
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