In an interview with IGN.com in 2006, director Henry Selick reflected upon the belated success of his film The Nightmare Before Christmas, and that he didn’t anticipate how popular it would become.
“It just sort of had this life beyond its first release, growing from a cult-size audience to a very large cult audience of people dressed up in the costumes, and with tattoos, and with songs inspired by it…So, no, we never could have foreseen this.”
When Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas bowed in theaters thirty years ago, it came and went quickly.
Disney debuted the film with tremendous marketing and fanfare, using The New York Film Festival to premiere it on October 9th, 1993. From here, the film had a limited release on October 13th, 1993, to build word-of-mouth and then it opened everywhere on October 29th, 1993.
Critics praised the movie’s artistry and originality. At the same time, some were less kind (Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly dubbed The Nightmare Before Christmas “Holloween”). Audiences at the time responded similarly, as the film went on to gross only $50 million in the U.S., far behind Disney’s last two animated hits, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.
By the Christmas shopping season, Nightmare merchandise found itself in toy store bargain bins.
Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is the definition of a film that wasn’t appreciated in its time. However, it has more than made up for that today.
Several years after Nightmare’s release, the film developed a cult following that snowballed and stretched outside of Disney’s usual base to include Burton aficionados and many in the “Goth community.” Fans began to seek out Nightmare collectibles, and those marked-down toys began to fetch some hefty prices on eBay.
In October of 2006, the film returned to theaters in 3D. In the years after, Nightmare products began reappearing on store shelves, and Jack and Sally started appearing at Disney theme parks during Halloween events. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the film was re-released to theaters this month.
Today, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is almost its own “sub-genre” of Disney, with fans who fully embrace the film at Halloween, Christmas, and all year round.
Not bad for a project that sat gathering dust for years at Disney. The film’s inception can be traced back to the 1980s when Tim Burton worked as an animator at Disney. While there, he created artwork for a potential holiday television special called The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Feeling as if his creative style was being stifled at Disney, Burton eventually left, becoming one of the most original live-action directors of his generation, with films like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988) and 1989’s behemoth blockbuster Batman.
It was around this time that Burton became interested in reviving The Nightmare Before Christmas and approached Disney about it. With the director’s star shining, Disney was interested in partnering with Burton on this.
However, Burton wanted this to be his vision (darker, moodier) and not like the traditional Disney fairy tales. To help differentiate it, The Nightmare Before Christmas would also be made in stop-motion instead of traditional 2D animation.
The film would center on Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, who has grown tired of scares and shrieks and yearns for something more. While wandering through the woods, he literally stumbles into Christmastown.
Upon seeing this, he sings, “What’s this?!?” and becomes obsessed with Christmas, so much that he decides that he and the other residents of Halloweentown will take over Christmas and deliver their (more gruesome) versions of Christmas gifts. Of course, when these two holidays collide, the results are disastrous.
The Nightmare Before Christmas also featured bizarre but compelling characters, including Sally, the sad, stitched-together rag doll who carries a torch for Jack, the Mayor of Halloweentown, a literal, two-faced politician, Lock, Shock and Barrel, three professional trick-or-treaters, Dr. Finkelstein, the mad scientist who created Sally, Santa Claus (or “Sandy Claws”) himself, and Oogie-Boogie, the film’s villain, a big, creepy, burlap bag full of bugs.
Tim Burton and Henry Selick
To bring these characters to the screen, Burton enlisted a number of previous collaborators. One of them was director Selick, who had built a successful career in stop-motion animation but once had worked as an animator at Disney with Burton.
Selick and his artists brought sequences to life that, three decades later, still astonish (and became iconic). Some of them include the opening “This is Halloween” song, which perfectly establishes the setting and tone of the film, culminating in Jack’s first stunning appearance as he emerges from the soupy, green water of the town’s fountain.
There’s also the dizzying moment when Jack discovers Christmastown, where the camera seemingly tries to keep up with him, and Oogie Boogie’s big musical number, set in black light, with stunningly fluid stop-motion.
Musician Danny Elfman, who had written the score for all of Burton’s live-action efforts, wrote the music and lyrics for Nightmare’s songs and also provided the singing voice of Jack (for more on the music of Nightmare, here is Dave Bossert’s article from 2019.
(L-R) Tim Burton and Danny Elfman
©Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
Jack’s speaking voice was provided by Chris Sarandon, with William Hickey as Dr. Finkelstein, Ken Page as Oogie Boogie, Edward Ivory as Santa, and several other Burton regular collaborators in the cast, as well: Catherine O’Hara as Sally and Shock, Paul Reubens as Lock and Glenn Shadix as the mayor.
Burton worked with writer Caroline Thompson, his collaborator on 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, for the screenplay.
When Thompson joined the project, sets had already been created, and the stop-motion puppets had been built. “It was like being an architect and being called in to build a house people were already living in,” remembered Thompson in a 1996 interview.
Additionally, gifted story artist Joe Ranft, who would go on to craft the stories for some of Pixar’s biggest hits, served as storyboard supervisor.
Nightmare was initially slated to be released by Walt Disney Pictures, but as the movie went through production, there was a thought that it had darker concepts that would connect more with an adult audience. The film shifted to Touchstone Pictures, and the release date of Thanksgiving was bumped up to October to align the film more with Halloween than Christmas. Also, to connect the film with what audiences had expected from the director, the official title was changed to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Through all of these changes and the years, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas slowly rebuilt its devoted audience and continues to. Thirty years later, so many have feelings about the film that echo those of Tim Burton himself, as he told writer Frank Thompson in his 1993 book, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Film The Art The Vision. Burton said:
“This film has all the elements I wanted for it: the holidays (I love both Halloween and Christmas), beautiful but misunderstood characters, drama, sadness, optimism. When I watch it now, after having had it in me for so long,’ he sighs deeply, ‘I love it.’”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
I thoroughly enjoyed this film when I saw it in theaters upon its original release. I saw links to older cartoons in this film, especially the max Fleischer variety. I own the collectors, laser disk box around this film with the hardcover book and clothes, but I do not own it on DVD or Blu-ray, yet. I will rectify that, hopefully. I recommended to anybody who has not seen it yet.
The music of Danny Elfman is one of the defining elements of this film. Many people don’t recognize the format as it is somewhat out of use and out of favor today, but the Nightmare Before Christmas is an operetta. As such, it is quite brilliant musically.
Now it has a special place in the hearts of Disneyland goers because the Haunted Mansion is made over every year for Haunted Mansion Holiday, using the Nightmare Before Christmas as its template. Proving that a good idea can prevail even if it takes a while to get recognized.
Masterpiece.
Few films are so perfectly complete. It contains every possible collaborative element that goes into timeless, memorable filmmaking, animated or otherwise. It does not need, nor should ever have, a sequel or prequel. Exquisite, artful moment in time.
I was fortunate enough to have worked on this great film. I knew Henry from some 2D special effects animation I had created for his puppet Pillsbury Doughboy spots at the old Colossal Studios in San Francisco.
https://cartoonlandanimation.com/animation/special-effects-animator/the-nightmare-before-christ.html
to be honest, I never really got into nightmare before Christmas before kingdom hearts, but the games made me appreciate the movie, and now I love it
I’m also fond of The Critic’s sendup, “The Nightmare before Chhhhhhhhannukkah”! 😉
This has been my favorite since the first time I saw it. I can completely identify with Jack since I am known as ScaryJere. long live the nightmare.
The film was shot south of Market in San Francisco. I forget which street. But the film had so little value to Disney, I saw what I think were the original figures used in a store display tie-in in Union Square! Was it Nieman-Marcus? Today you could never do that! They’re worth a fortune! I’ve had plenty of opportunities to ask Henry Selick about this but there are always bigger issues to deal with.
I’ve always thought that Universal should have shot “Wicked” as a stop motion feature with Henry (they’ve complained so much about the different live action budgets). But that’s done now and we’ll soon see what they got! Hopefully it works!
Mr. Lyons, you should have mentioned that Henry recently publicly floated the idea of doing a prequel to “Nightmare”!
It’s hard to believe this film is 30 years old! I think it is a classic and belongs with the vintage classics of DISNEY – the kind of films the studio USED to make!
I love this film. It it soooo creative, and so unusual in the storyline and the character choices. Fantastic job, Tim Burton on the story, and Danny Elfman, on the music. Also, thanks to all of the other talented artists that created this wonderful and intriguing film. It’s a classic!!
Movies about Christmas, like movies about baseball, are almost always risky at the box office: “Miracle on 34th Street” (which initially was a summer release for some reason), “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “A Christmas Story” were all failures on their initial releases, but audiences started cozying up to them once they appeared regularly in their living rooms. But it wasn’t TV that saved “Nightmare Before Christmas”; it was being quirky and original and just plain unforgettable. The best movies of the ’90s, in fact. There’s more expressiveness in Jack Skellington’s empty eye sockets than in the prettier eyes of any of the current so-called stars.
It also helps that there are relatively few holiday-special type family films for Halloween, as opposed to standard horror films. And “Nightmare” is clearly influenced by the 1960s Rankin-Bass output–primarily “Rudolph” and “Mad Monster Party.”
KEVIN WOLLENWEBER, the blu-ray transfer is amazing, it brings the film to life in a way that hasn’t been seen since its original release. I highly recommend it!
The Blu-ray master is actually pretty deficient, even if it isn’t much or any worse than previous home-video releases. I’ve seen what this film looks like from a 35mm original release print, and the difference is akin to that between an old TV master of a classic cartoon and a Technicolor print or restoration of that cartoon—the print is that much richer in its colors and appearance.
The recent remaster for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, not yet released on standard Blu-ray, is a considerable improvement, but even it apparently falls short of representing the color/exposure timing of the original release; some of its scenes still quite literally pale in comparison. With even director Selick having lent his approval to this version, however, a truly faithful restoration of the film’s original appearance doesn’t seem forthcoming anytime soon. Of course, neither does a restoration of the original Touchstone title sequences…
Some movie theaters are – or were – promoting a new 3-D enhanced version of NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Has anybody seen it?
Never seen it till i was with my husband in 2020. He loved it and when i watched it i could see why. Definitely dark and different story of evil developing a conscience.
I can never go a single Halloween without Nightmare Before Christmas! To me, it’s become one of those staples of Halloween that personifies the epitome of the season going into Christmas and how much both holidays have that contrast of darkness and light. It’s such a memorable experience in animation both visually and in storytelling.
Since it wasn’t mentioned, I’ll note that Dave Bossert’s book about this fine picture, excerpts of which were the basis for some articles of his posted here in years past, finally made it out of publisher limbo over the summer to become available in time for the anniversary.
https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Burtons-Nightmare-Before-Christmas/dp/1484799852