The Walt Disney Company has reportedly made a conscious effort to make Pixar’s Inside Out 2 “less gay” following the box-office failure of Lightyear, with studio executives blaming the latter movie’s much-discussed same-sex kiss for turning away audiences.
Multiple sources said that Disney leadership internally put a large part of the blame for Lightyear’s financial failure on a lesbian kiss, which was briefly removed then restored after an internal staff rebellion.
LGBTQ employees at Pixar reportedly sent a letter to Disney leadership, accusing them of censoring “overtly gay affection” at a time where employees were also protesting Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which contains controversial sections that prohibit public schools from having “classroom discussion” or giving “classroom instruction” about sexual orientation or gender identity,
Multiple sources said they recall hearing about continuous notes to make Riley, the main character of both Inside Out movies, come across as “less gay,” leading to numerous edits that ramped up around September 2023 after the resolution of the Hollywood writers strike.
Sources also described rumours that there was special care put into making the relationship between Riley and Val, a supporting character introduced in Inside Out 2, seem as platonic as possible, even requiring edits to the lighting and tone of certain scenes to remove any trace of “romantic chemistry.”
One source said it was like “just doing a lot of extra work to make sure that no one would potentially see them as not straight.”
