Disney leadership reportedly has blamed the failure of ‘LIGHTYEAR’ on a same-sex kiss. Continuous notes were then given to animators to make Riley come across as “less gay” in ‘INSIDE OUT 2’:
“It is, as far as I know, still a thing, where leadership, they’ll bring up Lightyear specifically and say, ‘Oh, Lightyear was a financial failure because it had a queer kiss in it,’” one source tells IGN. “That’s not the reason the movie failed.”
GN sources suggest that development on Inside Out 2 was impacted by a reluctance to embrace LGBTQ themes. Reportedly, multiple people heard directives to portray Riley, the main character, as “less gay,” leading to edits that intensified after the WGA strike ended in September 2023. Rumors indicate that significant effort was made to ensure Riley’s relationship with Val, a new supporting character, appeared strictly platonic. Some scenes even underwent changes in lighting and tone to minimize any hint of romantic chemistry between the two characters.
One source describes it as “just doing a lot of extra work to make sure that no one would potentially see them as not straight.”
“Mind you, Riley is not canonically gay,” one source says. “In the film, what you saw, nothing about Riley says that she is gay, but it is kind of inferred based on certain contexts. And so that is something that they tried to play down at multiple points.”
One source mentioned that some leaders felt “uncomfortable” with queer themes, and the push to exclude these elements from Inside Out 2 was a recurring issue throughout its development.
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