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With its upcoming film Bear, an origin story about The Jungle Book’s Baloo, Disney is set to make history with its first gay character to come out of the movie entirely, never to be seen or heard from in the entire project.
“We are so proud to release a film that at one point featured an out-and-proud queer character in an early draft,” wrote Disney CEO Bob Chapek in a statement hailed as groundbreaking by Advocate.com. “As moviemakers, it’s crucial that we show young queer kids that their stories matter to a certain extent.”
Producers of the film have confirmed, that at one point in the movie, Baloo buys a banana from a monkey store owner. In an original draft, the monkey mentioned he has a boyfriend, but in later drafts, “boyfriend” was replaced by “cousin” before the scene was omitted entirely.
“We think it’s more powerful that there’s no longer an explicitly gay character in the movie,” explained Chapek. “That way you can project whatever sexualities you want onto any character. Feel free to go crazy! You could even say that Baloo is coded as bisexual. Why not?”
In response to Chapek’s statement, entertainment writers at out.com praised Bear for the LGBTQ representation offered by its omitted gay character, who clearly left his impact on the film because it is about love.
“We hope that, going forward, this won’t have to be groundbreaking,” concluded Chapek. “We at Disney are dreamers, and we dream of a world in which people of all sexualities, genders, and races could potentially see themselves represented in our movies, more specifically, in the ‘deleted scenes’ section of our movie’s IMDb pages.”
At press time, Bear was preemptively awarded a GLAAD Media Award.
