You probably will remember the drama that surrounded “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” after its release last year. The film was universally beloved by fans and critics, but that didn’t stop folks who worked on the film from speaking out about the reportedly terrible working conditions during production of the animated film. Now, another animated film is the subject of behind-the-scenes drama, “Inside Out 2.”
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According to quite a few sources in a report from IGN, there was a lot of drama at Pixar during the run-up to the release of “Inside Out 2.” We already knew about the dozens of layoffs that occurred before the film was released, but according to the report, there was so much pressure put on the Pixar team as they rushed to finish the film before its release date. This created a situation where many people in the crew were working seven days a week. And because some of them got laid off, they didn’t receive the bonuses that others received after the film’s release.
But that’s maybe not the saddest part of the report. IGN also said that Pixar truly believed that the thing that derailed the release of the previous film, “Lightyear,” was an onscreen kiss between two women. The same-sex kiss did cause a bit of controversy during the film’s release, but to blame the failure of “Lightyear” on a small scene is a bit disingenuous. However, this issue at Pixar created an environment where anything remotely gay about a film would have to get cut.
That’s where “Inside Out 2” comes into play again.
The report said that Pixar executives were really concerned about “Inside Out 2” main character Riley being perceived as gay. That led to orders for anything that could be misconstrued as gay being cut from the movie. What’s really interesting about this is the fact that there has already been a short film that showed Riley’s first date with a boy. So, the idea of Riley being gay is actually not even canonically true. Alas, folks at Pixar were concerned that the relationship between Riley and her best friend could be perceived as having any sort of queer undertones.
All this to say that there was quite a bit of drama behind the scenes at Pixar, and sadly, between “Lightyear” and “Inside Out 2,” there is seemingly a fear of including any sort of LGBTQ characters. We’ll have to wait and see what happens at Pixar after all of this comes out.