Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter explained the animation company’s decision to ax a storyline in last year’s Elio, which initially featured a plot point reflecting original director Adrian Molina’s experience growing up gay.
Docter told the Wall Street Journal bluntly of the reasoning behind the creative overhaul, in which the Walt Disney Studios subsidiary found that some parents didn’t want media to broach topics they weren’t ready to discuss with their children.
“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” he said.
The box office flop, which follows an 11-year-old underdog who forms unlikely bonds with extraterrestrials, was later shepherded by directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian. Previous iterations of the movie included a scene that depicted Elio raising a child in the future with a male crush, per the WSJ.
Though Pixar was previously focused on original projects, it is now aiming to pipeline content with sequel potential and more universally palatable storylines, as opposed to the director-driven semi-autobiographical stories of the past, like Shi’s Turning Red.
“As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody,” Docter told the publication, indicating he is driving Pixar to prioritize relatable concepts. (Toy Story 5 will release this summer, while sequels for The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc. are currently being developed.)
The three-time Oscar-winning writer-director behind Up, Inside Out and Soul said he believes Pixar will continue to be “useful” to parent company Disney so long as it focuses on producing quality films.
“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,” he said.
Pixar’s latest, Hoppers by Daniel Chong, is currently playing in theaters.
