Love, Simon is the 2018 coming-of-age movie centred on Simon Spier (acted by Nick Robinson), a 17-year-old closeted gay high-school boy. In the movie, Simon is forced to balance his friends, his family, and the blackmailer threatening to ‘out’ him to the entire school, while simultaneously attempting to discover the identity of the anonymous classmate with whom he has fallen in love online.
In April 2019, Disney+ gained the rights to make ‘Love, Simon’ and announced that it was adapting the movie for a 10-episode TV series. However, recent updates show that the proposed TV show has been pulled from Disney+ hence, it will no longer be showing on the network.
According to a report on Variety, “Disney felt many issues explored on the show, including alcohol use and sexual exploration, would not fit in with the family-friendly content on Disney Plus,” the new streaming arm of the family entertainment company”.
According to The Advocate, however, this might be dishonest as the TV show “did showcase some drinking at a party but was remarkably chaste in its depiction of sexuality. The protagonist, Simon, spends the majority of the film speculating about the identity of an anonymous love interest he corresponds with via email and only kisses him at the conclusion upon discovering his identity”.
The TV show will now air on Hulu by June 2020 – for PRIDE – and under a new name; ‘Love, Victor’, which is set in the same world as the 2018 film – about a gay teen who fears being outed by a peer but with a different storyline. It “follows Victor, a brand new, wholesome closeted protagonist played by Michael Cimino, who reaches out to Simon for help to navigate high school.”
“Michael Cimino stars as Victor, alongside Ana Ortiz, James Martinez, Isabella Ferreira, Mateo Fernandez, Rachel Naomi Hilson, Bebe Wood, George Sear, Anthony Turpel, and Mason Gooding. Nick Robinson, who starred as the titular role in the original film, produces and narrates the series.”
This isn’t the first time Disney is pulling out of a movie-making process. According to Paper, “Disney Plus did re-route Zoe Kravitz’s High Fidelity to Hulu with similar concerns, though that makes slightly more sense, considering it follows a bunch of misanthropic, dysfunctional adults”. Although to be fair, some of their originals like High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Diary of a Future Female President and the documentary series Encore (which has former drama club participants, now adults, re-staging their high school shows) display queer characters even though only subtly and not as main characters.
The question for Disney+ remains; what about same-sex love on screen is not family-friendly?
