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• Why America Ferrera left Elio: An animator describes the "exodus of talent" after Pixar leadership shifted the focus of the movie

The last box office weekend of June 2025 was an interesting one. Brad Pitt's racing thriller F1 sped ahead of the crowd, while Blumhouse's robokiller M3GAN 2.0 seemed to be working out some bugs. And though it didn't debut that weekend, PIxar's Elio raised eyebrows for all the wrong reasons. according to Variety, the intergalactic animated adventure dipped 49% in revenue between its first and second weekends - the worst start to a Pixar film in history. 

As the weekend was drawing to a close, The Hollywood Reporter published a deep dive into what went wrong with the project, and among their investigations was a possible answer to one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the film. That is, why had America Ferrera, who was once a major part of the voice cast, departed the movie?

But first, some context. As THR points out, Ferrera's casting was part of Elio's announcement all the way back at D23 2022. But by the time the next D23 had rolled around in 2024, the Barbie and How to Train Your Dragon star had pulled out of the project. Originally, she had been on the call sheet as the titular alien-seeker's mother, Olga. So what changed? Well, according to an unnamed former Pixar animator who spoke to THR, Ferrera's departure happened shortly after that of the film's original creative lead: Coco director Adrian Molina.

And Ferrera wasn't the only one who chose to leave.

"The exodus of talent after that cut," says the animator, referring to a test screening of the movie that shortly preceded Molina's departure, "Was really indicative of how unhappy a lot of people were that they had changed and destroyed this beautiful work."

Let's be clear, Molina's departure isn't the only given reason for Ferrera's exit. THR mentions that, as the post-Molina creatives began to radically change the script (Note: Many of the changes seem to revolve around the removal of Elio's implied queer identity), the actor was repeatedly called back in to rerecord work she had already done. 

That said, THR's source makes it quite apparent that those scheduling changes, annoying though they might've been, didn't affect her decision nearly as much as Molina's quitting of the film. "America was upset that there was no longer Latinx representation in the leadership," the ex-Pixar animator says.

Elio is in theaters now.

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