“The Nightmare Before Christmas,” is the world’s very first stop motion feature film, a beloved Disney classic and a movie that bridges the gap between two unlikely holidays— Christmas and Halloween—for a perfect film that begs to be watched twice a year. The merchandise is everywhere, likely in every Hot Topic in the nation, and it is difficult to find someone nowadays who hasn’t seen “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” let alone someone who’s never heard of it.
However, it did not begin that way. The film had a rocky production, a letdown of a box office release and was almost never created in the first place. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” took a long road to become the cult classic it is today, and the whole thing started with a rooky Disney animator named Tim Burton.
In 1982, before he was the famous director of movies such as “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Batman,” Burton was a young animator at Disney whose work didn’t quite fit the “image” the company was looking for. His drawings were dark, macabre, and much too frightening for Disney’s colorful aesthetic at the time. During Burton’s time at Disney, he wrote a poem.
“It was late one fall in Halloweenland / And the air had quite a chill. / Against the moon a skeleton sat, / Alone upon a hill. / He was tall and thin with a bat bow tie; / Jack Skellington was his name. / He was tired and bored in Halloweenland – / Everything was always the same.” And so began the story of Jack Skellington and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Burton enamored with his new idea, took the poem to the higher-ups at Disney, hoping to turn the idea into a film. They told him: Absolutely not. It was too dark, too macabre and too scary for children. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” did not fit the Disney “brand.” Discouraged, Burton filed the poem away and was soon fired from Disney after the completion of his short film “Frankenweenie,” which Disney executives too thought was too frightening for children and was a waste of company resources.
Burton did not leave Disney with nothing: he had made vital connections. Two other Disney employees, Henry Selick and Rick Henrichs, bonded with Burton over their shared distaste for drawing Disney’s classic style and kept in contact even after they all left the company.
After leaving Disney, Burton began to gain acclaim as a director. He directed “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” of the popular Pee-wee Herman franchise as his directorial debut, and then went on to direct the previously mentioned “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Batman.” Even with four huge films under his belt, Burton still could not let go of the idea of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” He went back to Disney, who still owned the rights to the story, to ask if he could buy it back from them. The Disney executives, now talking to one of the biggest directors in Hollywood, asked, “Why don’t we make it with you?”
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” was finally in the works, with Disney supplying the budget and Burton at the helm. Or he was until Warner Brothers came calling. They wanted Burton to direct the next Batman film, “Batman Returns.” Unable to pass up the chance to do another Batman, Burton left “Nightmare” up to his two old friends from Disney, with Selick becoming the new director and Henrichs as a visual consultant.
Finally, in 1991, nearly a decade after the idea’s initial conception, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” began production. Danny Elfman, who had worked with Burton before, was brought on to make the music for the film despite never writing a musical before. Michael McDowell, who was known most for writing the script for “Beetlejuice,” was hired to write the scripts but was doing so far too slowly for the storyboarders.
Elfman was forced to write and compose the songs for the film with no script, which he did in his garage. With Elfman sending demo tapes over to the animators, they could finally begin to storyboard and sculpt figures for the musical sequences. McDowell, who was writing the scripts months behind schedule, was eventually sacked. Brought in his stead was Caroline Thompson, scriptwriter for “Edward Scissorhands,” and Elfman’s girlfriend at the time. She had been listening to him write the music for “Nightmare” in their garage for months and knew exactly how to write her scripts to fit his music.
When the production was in full swing, the crew of over 120 workers were using 20 sound stages at once to film. Throughout production, 109,440 frames of stop motion were taken, using over 200 puppets, with Jack himself having over 400 heads all to himself. For most of the production, they were creating one minute of film per week.
Alongside the beautiful stop motion, a star-studded cast of voice actors was brought in to bring life to the characters. Chris Sarandon (“The Princess Bride,” “Fright Night”) brought his dark moody voice to Jack Skellington, Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek,” “Beetlejuice”) lent her soft melodic voice to Sally, Glenn Shadix (“Beetlejuice”) voiced of the wild mood-swinging Mayor, and Ken Page (Original Broadway cast of “Cats” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’”) brought his deep spooky jazz singing to the malicious antagonist Oogie Boogie. And Danny Elfman, through his hours and hours of voicing Jack through the demo tapes, became so attached to the character that he begged Burton to let him sing for the role. Burton let him have it, and so Elfman shared the role with Sarandon as the crooning, lamenting singing voice of Jack Skellington.
Finally, in 1993, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was finished. It was released to test audiences of children, while the team waited with bated breath for what they would think of the movie that took so much hard work to create. And…it was a disaster.
As Disney had feared, the film was too scary for very young children. Worried about what it would do to the brand if they released the film under the Disney label, they instead released the film under their sister studio, Touchstone Pictures, and renamed the film “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” in order to appeal to teenage audiences, despite Burton not having much to do with the film after the idea’s initial conception.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” was officially released at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 9, 1993, to moderate success. It made 50 million dollars, over double its budget, but was a small success considering other Disney films like “Aladdin,” which made 217 million dollars the previous year. Despite its great critic scores and lauding reviews, after “Nightmare” was gone from the theaters, it faded from public view, destined to gather dust on the back of Disney’s shelves.
Or so everyone thought. It was not until about ten years later that Elfman, Selick and the other crew members who worked on “Nightmare” began to notice merchandise for the movie popping up on shelves and fan cosplays showing up at conventions. There was one common denominator for the increased interest: home video. People had begun to rent the film out from their local Blockbuster and spread it around to all their friends and family, and slowly but surely, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” became a cult classic decades after its initial release. With renewed interest, Disney re-released the film under the Disney label.
Today, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is one of the most beloved Disney movies of all time, for Halloween and Christmas lovers alike. This Halloween, be on the lookout for any Jacks and Sallys that appear around your local stores and maybe consider snuggling up with a bowl of snake and spider stew to watch one of the most impressive stop-motion films of all time and dive back into the world of Halloweenland.
After all, boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange?