Pixar’s new animated film “Elio” crashed on the launchpad last month. The title scored fairly good critical reviews and a very good ‘A’ CinemaScore, but debuted to the worst opening weekend ever for a film by the famed animation studio.
Its second weekend saw a large enough drop that it seems this won’t do an “Elemental”-style turnaround and have legs for weeks to come. Now, it’s only a question of when the title will hit the Disney+ service.
However, a new feature piece over at THR has gone into the turbulent behind-the-scenes mess of this story of a lonely boy beamed into outer space after being misidentified as the leader of Earth.
Adrian Molina, the co-director 2017’s acclaimed “Coco,” was the original director on “Elio”. As the lead character was 11, Molina didn’t want a coming-out story for Elio but did wish to include some very mild queer-coded elements – namely the character loving fashion and environmentalism, and having a picture of a male character suggesting a potential crush.
However, through the production process came feedback from studio leadership to make the character more ‘conventionally masculine’ and so those elements were ditched.
Molina also conducted an early test screening in Arizona where viewers reportedly expressed that they enjoyed the movie. However, when asked if they would see it in a theater – not a single hand was raised. This got the studio panicking.
At the same time, Molina screened his latest cut of the film to Pixar leadership with the filmmaker reportedly “hurt by the conversation” with Pixar boss Pete Docter. Shortly after, Molina exited the project and ended up on “Coco 2”. Some others also opted out, including America Ferrera who originally voiced Elio’s mother.
Once he left, new co-directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi came in and majorly reworked the project. They re-edited and screened their new cut of the film.
One former assistant editor tells the trade that screening didn’t go down well: “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.”
A former artist says the sanding down of the lead character and the film’s identity themes turned it into something “about totally nothing” with the main character said to be very generic. Another says the theatrical version is “far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.”
The film’s official production budget is listed as $150 million, but former employees tell the trade it was “well north of $200 million” as Molina’s version was nearly complete before the overhaul came.
One artist says the problem isn’t so much Disney as much as “higher execs at Pixar” doing a lot of “obeying-in-advance behavior” in an effort to avoid controversy. Thst has led to things like next year’s “Hoppers” toning down environmental themes, while one director was told they “can’t have divorce in this movie”.
Ultimately, it’s looking like the extra expense of time, money and effort spent reworking a nearly completed “Elio” was mostly just money down the drain for the studio.
