Information about The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
Original Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Henry Selick
Produced by	Tim Burton Denise DiNovi
Written by	Tim Burton (story) Caroline Thompson (screenplay) Michael McDowell (adaptation) Danny Elfman (lyrics)
Starring	Chris Sarandon Danny Elfman Catherine O'Hara William Hickey Glenn Shadix Paul Reubens
Music by	Danny Elfman
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures (original version) Walt Disney Pictures (2006 remastered 3-D version)
Release date(s)	October 22, 1993 October 20, 2006 (remastered 3-D version) October 19, 2007 (2007 remastered 3-D version)
Running time	86 min.
Language	English
Budget	$18,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is a 1993 Academy Award-nominated, stop motion animated musical film about the inhabitants of Halloween Town who take over Christmas, directed by stop-motion animator Henry Selick. The film is loosely based on drawings and a poem by Tim Burton, and he served as co-producer; he did not direct the film, as is sometimes believed (he turned it down so he could direct Batman Returns), but he was heavily involved. The score and the songs were composed by Tim Burton's long-time collaborator, Danny Elfman, who also provided the singing voice of the main character, Jack Skellington .

The film was originally released by Touchstone Pictures, a label owned by the Walt Disney Company, because it was considered inappropriate to use the Walt Disney Pictures banner at that time due to the darker content displayed in this film.

Plot

At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to Halloween Town, an alternate world where the annual holiday of Halloween takes place, and to its biggest celebrity, protagonist Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King. Although Jack is loved and respected by the townspeople for his creativity and his ability to terrify, he has grown tired of the repetitive character of Halloween and feels that there is something missing from his life, not unlike a mid-life crisis. While wandering in the woods after one such Halloween, with his loyal ghost dog, Zero, Jack discovers a circle of trees he has never seen before, which prove to be a nexus for several holiday-themed worlds. Each tree has a door on it with different icons from the holiday seasons, such as a four leaf clover (St. Patrick's Day) or a heart (Valentine's Day); Jack is immediately attracted to the door in the shape of a Christmas Tree. When Jack opens this Christmas tree door, an icy wind pulls him into a town filled with snow, lights, music, and happiness. Jack is mesmerized by all the colors and cheerfulness, and inspired to bring the holiday back home. Meanwhile, though he has been gone only a day, the Townspeople of Halloween launch a frantic manhunt for Jack.

Upon his return to Halloween Town, Jack immediately calls for a town meeting. During the meeting he reveals several of the artifacts he brought with him (stole) from Christmas town. Unfortunately, the denizens of Halloween Town only think in terms of how these toys and boxes could be used for Halloween. Frustrated from the misunderstandings, Jack describes the ruler of Christmas Town in the only way the town members can understand: as a lobster-red creature possessing a deep voice and riding his sleigh "like a vulture in the sky," named "Sandy Claws". Distraught by his friends' inability to understand Christmas, Jack locks himself in his house and performs multiple experiments to try to understand its meaning himself. He finally decides that believing in Christmas is all it takes, and informs the town of his intention to take over Christmas for that year. Sally, a rag doll, who is secretly in love with Jack, has a vision of the disasters to come and tries to warn him that taking over something of which he is ignorant may be a bad idea. However, Jack is too wrapped up in his fantasies to listen.

Jack assigns each of the townspeople certain duties in order to make Christmas theirs, including having Sally sew Jack a Santa Claus outfit and having Dr. Finklestein (Sally's creator) bring several skeleton reindeer to life. Despite Jack's efforts to make their Christmas joyful, the townspeople combine the ideas of Christmas and Halloween, creating macabre toys and dangerous decorations.

In order to complete the takeover, Jack enlists the help of a trio of young, mischievous trick-or-treaters named Lock, Shock, and Barrel to capture Santa Claus. After mistakenly kidnapping the Easter Bunny, the trio bring Santa Claus to Jack, who warns them not to take Santa to their master, a psychotic gambling addict Boogie Man named Oogie Boogie. However, out of their sense of fun, they take him to Oogie Boogie anyway without Jack's knowledge.

On Christmas Eve, Jack embarks from Halloween Town to share Halloween Town's toys with the whole world. Sally attempts to stop Jack's departure by creating a fog bank; however Zero's glowing Jack-'o-Lantern nose allows Jack to see through the thick fog. The citizens of the real world are frightened by the Halloween-themed toys Jack delivers; blood-sucking vampire dolls, shrunken heads, man-eating Christmas wreaths, even a fanged rubber ducky; therefore, they begin to call the police, reporting attacks from toys and a "flying skeleton." Soon after, the military is called to deal with the Santa Claus impostor, eventually shooting Jack out of the sky with artillery. At the same time, Sally sets off to rescue Santa Claus in order to set things right. However, during her rescue attempt, she is also captured by Oogie Boogie, who gambles with his captives' lives over a large cauldron of Oogie's "snake and spider stew". The other citizens of Halloween Town witness Jack being shot down, and, fearing the worst, begin to mourn his "death". Meanwhile, the citizens of the real world are being informed that since the real Santa Claus cannot be found, Christmas must therefore be canceled.

Upon regaining consciousness in a graveyard amongst the wreckage of his failed Christmas, Jack hears the news of the cancellation and realizes his foolishness. In a moment of reflection, he realizes that his role in life is to be the Pumpkin King, and his failure with Christmas gives him ideas to make the next Halloween the best ever. Remembering the present, he decides to start by setting things right. In an effort to save this Christmas, Jack returns to Halloween Town to save Santa Claus. He rushes to Oogie's lair to rescue both Sally and Santa Claus, defeating Oogie and revealing him to be nothing more than a burlap sack full of bugs. The villain meets a terrible demise when Jack throws a loose string into a fan, ripping off the sack which causes all but one of these bugs fall into the boiling stew; the last bug is crushed under the foot of Santa Claus himself. After scolding Jack and telling him that Sally is "the only one who makes sense in this insane asylum", Santa magically floats out the chimney and restores peace to the real world by replacing all of Jack's deadly presents with his own. Jack returns to Halloween Town, to the great joy of its citizens. Santa then flies over Halloween Town, and with a greeting of "Happy Halloween" (which meets a response of "Merry Christmas" from Jack), brings snow to the town. Thus the citizens of Halloween Town finally begin to understand the Christmas spirit.

In the end, Jack finally comes to appreciate what Sally has attempted to do for him, and falls in love with her. Even though she still cannot admit her feelings, he admits his, whereupon they embrace and kiss on the curling Moonlight Hill with the final line "for it is plain, as anyone can see: we're simply meant to be" while Zero watches happily from afar.

Cast and characters

See also:

Character	English voice actor	French voice actor	German voice actor	Spanish voice actor	Italian voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Jack Skellington	Chris Sarandon/ Danny Elfman (singing)	Olivier Constantin	Alexander Goebel	Antonio Miguel Fernández Ramos Tony Cruz (singing)	Renato Zero	Masachika Ichimura
Sally	Catherine O'Hara	Dorothée Jemma Nina Morato (singing)	Nina Hagen	Ángela González María Caneda (singing)	Laura Boccanera Marjorie Biondo(singing)	Yūko Doi
Doctor Finklestein	William Hickey	Bernard Tiphaine	Fred Maire	Simón Ramírez	Fransesco Vairano	Yuji Mitsuya
Mayor of Halloween Town	Glenn Shadix	Daniel Beretta	Michael Gahr	Juan Miguel Cuesta Javier Pontón (singing)	Giorgio Lopez	Tōru Ōhira
Oogie Boogie	Ken Page	Richard Darbois	Ron Williams	Jesús Castejón	Ennio Coltorti Andrea Surdi (singing)	Atomu Kobayashi
Lock	Paul Reubens	Michel Costa	Niko Macoulis	N/A	N/A	Shintarō Sonōka
Shock	Catherine O'Hara	Céline Monsarrat	Katrin Fröhlich	N/A	Monica Ward	Yūko Doi
Barrel	Danny Elfman	Bertrand Liébert	Crock Krumbiegel	N/A	N/A	Shigeo Mazawa
Santa Claus	Ed Ivory	Henri Poitier	Manfred Lichtenfeld	Julio Nuñez	Silvio Spaccesi	Tomoaki Nagae

• Danny Elfman – Clown with the Tear Away Face
• Susan McBride – Big Witch
• Greg Proops – Harlequin Demon, Saxophone Player, Devil
• Carmen Twillie – Monster Under the Bed, Undersea Gal
• Debi Durst – Corpse Mom, Corpse Kid, Little Witch
• Randy Crenshaw – Mr. Hyde, Behemoth, Vampire
• Kerry Katz – Monster Under the Stairs, Corpse Dad, Vampire
• Sherwood Ball – Mummy Kid, Vampire
• Glenn Walters – Wolfman

:NOTE: On the soundtrack album, Patrick Stewart voices the opening narrative poem. A second poem, also read by Stewart, is included before the end credits music; in this passage, the narrator describes a visit he made to Halloween Town many years after the events of the film.

Initial conception

The original ideas for the film came to Tim Burton while working as an animator for Disney. While at work, Burton scribbled out the poem on a piece of paper as well as a few drawings. These initial versions only included Jack, Zero and Santa Claus.^[1]

Burton has stated that he was inspired by being at a store and seeing them taking down the Halloween merchandise and changing it out for Christmas displays: the juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination. Burton also loved holiday movies such as How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. In an interview, he described The Nightmare Before Christmas as almost an opposite of The Grinch, because instead of wanting to destroy Christmas, Jack accidentally destroys it while trying to celebrate it.^[2]

Sally-the-ragdoll character is named after real-life seamstress Sally Lockhart.

Production

The Nightmare Before Christmas marked the first time that a stop-motion movie had been attempted at this scale. Because of this fact, a great deal of imagination and inventiveness had to be used in making the film. In order to produce the film, Tim Burton assembled a hand-picked group of animators, artists, and crew members to work on the film and founded a production company called Skellington Studios. As an artist himself, Burton was very involved in the production process, guiding the production crew as to the way the film should look and feel, even limiting them to orange, black and white as the primary colors of Halloween Town. Burton also encouraged the artists to not use their dominant hands so as to give their drawings his trademark feel.

Once the sets had been approved they were then made into half scale mock-ups out of cardboard. These were then used as guidelines to build the actual sets. The puppets were constructed with a detailed metal armature as a skeleton, and then placed into molds which were injected with a foam latex. From there they were sent to the fabrication department to be painted and finished. Multiple puppets were made of most of the characters so that they could cycle between the set and fabrication for touch ups.

The crew often had to improvise solutions to problems that they encountered during production. One of these problems was to give facial expressions to the puppets and making them speak. This was accomplished in a number of different fashions. Some puppets had mouths that were moved manually while some of the main puppets, such as Jack, were given hundreds of replaceable heads so that they could have a greater range of expression. The puppet for Sally was given interchangeable masks that were integrated behind her hairline because her hair was too long to be sculpted for the number of heads that would be needed. Another problem that was faced was allowing the animators to work on the sets. Because some of the sets were so large, the animators were worried that they would have to reach too far to move the puppets. This problem was solved by building the sets in different sections that could be separated when an animator was working and then placed back together for the shot.

The actual production of filming was a very slow and grueling process, taking over 3 years to finish. The animators worked on multiple sound stages at once to improve productivity on the film but a week’s work was still only a minute’s worth of actual film. The animators had to be very cautious on the sets as a simple thing such as a bump to one of the puppets could ruin a shot and they would have to start from scratch.

At the finish of the production of the film, the sets and puppets all faced different fates. Henry Selick kept a great deal of props from the film in his personal collection, and some of the animators also took home the puppets. Many of the sets were simply discarded as there were so many of them and they took up a great deal of space. A number of the puppets with a more human like structure were cut open and the armature taken out, as they were custom made and expensive. The Town Hall can currently be seen on display by the staircase leading from the ground to the 1st floor at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney, Orlando, Florida.

Release history

The film was first theatrically released in the U.S. to a wide audience in October of 1993 after its New York City premiere. Subsequent international releases followed.

The remastered Disney Digital 3-D version of the film was released by Walt Disney Pictures on October 20, 2006.^[3] With a total of over 600 theaters, equipped with Real D projectors, the film was re-released on October 19, 2007.^[4] A preview for the re-release was presented before Meet the Robinsons.

For home video, the film has been released on VHS and DVD by Walt Disney Video. Several years later, a "Special Edition" was released with a collection of bonus features not previously available. The remastered digital print created for the 2006 theatrical re-release has not been issued on home video, and since 2006 the DVD has been out of print.

Reaction and legacy

Nightmare originally opened in wide release on October 29, 1993. Although it received generally positive reviews by critics, with a 97% "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes, the film struggled to find an audience. It eventually earned a respectable $53 million at the box office, but still was not nearly as successful as many other Disney films of that time.

The film won the 1994 Golden Globe Award for best original score. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Visual Effects, but lost to Industrial Light & Magic's dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

When The Nightmare Before Christmas was released on video on September 30, 1994, it gradually gained a cult following. In the late '90s, its following boomed; it has since become a mainstream hit, and is even considered a Halloween/Christmas classic. Among emo and goth culture Jack is considered the ideal charcter. He characterizes the style and charm and manages to be kind and (sometimes) happy and yet melencholly and has a deep mystique.

The same studio that produced The Nightmare Before Christmas later created another stop-motion movie based on the Roald Dahl book James and the Giant Peach (1996), but it was not as successful as Nightmare.

In 2005, Burton returned to the medium of stop motion with the film, Corpse Bride, which was distributed by Warner Bros.

On October 20, 2006, a remastered Disney Digital 3D version of the film was released in select theaters. In conjunction with the 3D re-release, Disney released a special two-disc soundtrack album on October 24, 2006. It features musical artists Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, Panic! at the Disco, Fiona Apple and She Wants Revenge, who contribute cover versions of songs featured in the film, as well as demo versions of some of the film's songs performed by Danny Elfman. The album quickly rose to #4 on the iTunes Top Albums chart.^[5]

A preview for a 2007 3D re-release was shown along with Meet The Robinsons. The 2007 theater release in North America was on October 19, 2007.

There has been talk of adapting the show for Broadway.

Haunted Mansion Holiday

For the past five years, the Disneyland in California and Tokyo Disneyland in Japan have received a Nightmare Before Christmas themed overlay, entitled Haunted Mansion Holiday in California and Holiday Nightmare in Japan, for their Haunted Mansion attractions. The attractions are closed in September each year for themes to be completely overhauled, and open again themed in October until January of the next year. The attraction generally has a one night opening event each year that includes special guests, a dinner, special merchandise, and a ride through the attraction, although the Happiest Celebration on Earth halted that in Disneyland in 2005. Starting in 2001, the ride has included a score that incorporates music from the film, written by film composer Danny Elfman, and adapted specifically for the ride by John Debney^[6].

Video games

A video game based on the original movie was released in 2005. is an action/adventure game developed by Capcom from Japan for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox systems.^[7] Intended to be a sequel to the movie, the game features the return of all the well-known characters in a new and arguably darker story with upgraded versions of the film's songs. In the story, Jack leaves Halloween Town to satisfy his curiosity. During Jack's absence, unfortunately, Oogie Boogie is reconstructed by Lock, Shock, and Barrel. By the time Jack returns, Oogie Boogie has taken over Halloween Town and tricked its people into thinking Jack has abandoned them. Now Jack has to stop Oogie Boogie's evil plans as he attempts to take over the other holiday worlds, and the 'real' world. The game features controls similar to Devil May Cry and a weapon known as a 'Soul Robber'. In the game players get other costumes such as "Pumpkin King," and "Santa Jack". The game was originally going to have a Teen rating, but upon release received an E-10 rating.

A GBA game, came out in fall 2005. The opposite of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, the GBA game works as a prequel to the movie. The Pumpkin King is a side-scrolling action platformer (similar to Metroid and Castlevania) in which the player controls Jack Skellington and use a number of different weapons to fight enemies and traverse obstacles. The side-scrolling adventure game centers on the first time Jack faced off against his nemesis, Oogie Boogie, to eventually become the Pumpkin King. The game's plot will kick off with the invasion of some unusual bugs in Halloween Town. Jack soon discovers that these nasty insects are under the control of Oogie Boogie, who's looking to take over Halloween himself. With these creepy wheels set in motion, it will be up to Jack and his friends — including characters such as Zero, Sally, Dr. Finklestein, and and that guy who likes to party all night long. Halloween Town's first appearance of this guy was in the Square Enix/Disney Kingdom Hearts video game series. In this game, Jack tries to create an artificial heart so he can control the Heartless for use in his "Heartless Halloween". His plan goes haywire when Oogie Boogie (one of the Disney villains allied with Maleficent) steals the heart, ingests it, and tries to use it to control the Heartless for his own purposes. Jack then teams up with Sora and the others to stop Oogie Boogie's plans. Jack can also join Sora's party whenever they are in Halloween Town. He was also included in the GameBoy Advance game as a Friend Card sporting his own unique Sleights, or combos. In this version, he helps Sora stop Oogie Boogie after the latter drank a potion that shows the true memories of the heart and frightens all but the most pure-hearted. His appearance as a Friend unlocks the availability of the Pumpkinhead Keyblade Card as well. Also, Oogie Boogie appears as an Enemy Card, allowing the player to slowly regain health over a short period of time.

Kingdom Hearts II also features Halloween Town and its residents. It seemingly follows the movie plot, in which Jack tries to take Santa Claus's place in Christmas. However, at one point during the story, Jack and Santa mention this being the second time Jack has attempted to take over Christmas. This justifies the theory that Kingdom Hearts II takes place after the events of the movie. This may be a reference to the early draft of the script where Santa asks Jack if he would try a second time at making Christmas. In the game, Maleficent arrives to recruit Lock, Shock, and Barrel to help her wreck Christmas Town and make Santa Claus into a Heartless. But when Sora arrives to help Jack as Santa's bodyguard, Maleficent uses her powers to revive Oogie Boogie, who now seems to have a short-term memory loss, remembering only his undying hatred of Jack and "sidekicks". Nonetheless, Oogie Boogie is defeated just as he had been before, with the exception that it is Donald Duck who squashes Oogie Boogie's last bug instead of Santa.

In the second visit, Jack (still wearing the Santa outfit) teams up with Sora to help bring back lost presents to Santa. During their mission, the two learn of a mysterious "gift-thief" which at first Lock, Shock and Barrel are accused but their innocence is later proven. The thief turns out to be a robotic creature created by Dr. Finklestein, referred to as the "Experiment." It is caught and defeated while attempting to find a heart by stealing Santa's presents since it lacked its own. Jack offers to still deliver the presents by Santa tells Jack why he is a leader of Halloween Town while im(Santa) am leader of Christmas Town.

Comics

The characters of The Nightmare Before Christmas have also appeared in the realm of comic books, more specifically in manga. An adaptation of the movie by Jun Asaga was published by Kodansha and later translated in English by Disney Press. Despite its popularity in the game Kingdom Hearts, the world "Halloween Town" failed to appear in the manga adaptation of the game,causing many to turn away from the manga by Shiro Amano, published by Bros. Comics EX (and later translated into English by Tokyopop). An allusion to the movie is also provided in the manga The Wallflower by Tomoko Hayakawa.

See also

• List of animated feature films
• List of stop-motion films
• List of characters in The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Corpse Bride

References

External links

• The Nightmare Before Christmas at Rotten Tomatoes
• 2007 3-D release - Link to the official site for the 2007 3-D release, including a theater locator.
• Nightmare Before Christmas - original poem by Tim Burton
• The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack information at scorereviews.com
• Film Review
• HalloweenTown - TNBC Fan Site
• TNBC Cult At VF.Com - TNBC Fan Site

•  • [ e] Disney theatrical animated features
Official canon	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) • Pinocchio (1940) • Fantasia (1940) • Dumbo (1941) • Bambi (1942) • Saludos Amigos (1942) • The Three Caballeros (1944) • Make Mine Music (1946) • Fun and Fancy Free (1947) • Melody Time (1948) • The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) • Cinderella (1950) • Alice in Wonderland (1951) • Peter Pan (1953) • Lady and the Tramp (1955) • Sleeping Beauty (1959) • One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) • The Sword in the Stone (1963) • The Jungle Book (1967) • The Aristocats (1970) • Robin Hood (1973) • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) • The Rescuers (1977) • The Fox and the Hound (1981) • The Black Cauldron (1985) • The Great Mouse Detective (1986) • Oliver & Company (1988) • The Little Mermaid (1989) • The Rescuers Down Under (1990) • Beauty and the Beast (1991) • Aladdin (1992) • The Lion King (1994) • Pocahontas (1995) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) • Hercules (1997) • Mulan (1998) • Tarzan (1999) • Fantasia 2000 (1999) • The Emperor's New Groove (2000) •  (2001) • Lilo & Stitch (2002) • Treasure Planet (2002) • Brother Bear (2003) • Home on the Range (2004) • Chicken Little (2005) • Meet the Robinsons (2007) • Bolt (2008) • Rapunzel (2009) • The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Live-action films with animation	The Reluctant Dragon (1941) • Victory Through Air Power (1943) • Song of the South (1946) • So Dear to My Heart (1949) • Mary Poppins (1964) • Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) • Pete's Dragon (1977) • Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) • Enchanted (2007)
DisneyToon features	(1990) • A Goofy Movie (1995) • Doug's 1st Movie (1999) • The Tigger Movie (2000) •  (2001) • Return to Never Land (2002) • The Jungle Book 2 (2003) • Piglet's Big Movie (2003) • Teacher's Pet (2004) • Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005)
Other	The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) • James and the Giant Peach (1996) • Dinosaur (2000) • A Christmas Carol (2009)
See also	Pixar • Walt Disney Animation Studios