20 facts you might not know about The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton is the first name associated with “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” In fact, it’s even been called “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” in advertising and such. However, Burton was a producer and got the “Story By” credit for this movie. He did not direct it. Instead, that role fell to Henry Selick.

OK, now we get into the Burton-y element of all this. The movie is based on a poem that Burton wrote when he was employed as an animator at the Walt Disney Company. After his 1982 short film “Vincent” got a little traction, Burton turned his attention toward “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” He thought it might be a TV special, with Vincent Price reading the poem, or perhaps a children’s book.

Burton began working on concept art for “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and after “Vincent” the brass at Disney had some interest. They considered turning it into a short film or a TV special but eventually declared it “too weird” for them to put out. Disney may have felt the same way about Burton, as they fired him in 1984.

Burton returned to the idea of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” in 1990, fresh off the success of “Batman” which effectively gave him a blank check. Now, Disney was willing to work with Burton on the project, since they still owned the rights. However, Burton was busy with “Batman Returns,” and also he didn’t want to handle the slow process of stop-motion animation himself. Thus, he brought on Selick to direct.

While it was based on a poem, and a poem can have a certain musicality, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was not originally going to be a musical. Burton was working with screenwriter Michael McDowell, who had written on “Beetlejuice,” at this time. Then, the two had creative differences and at this point, Burton turned it into a musical. McDowell still gets an “Adaptation By” credit.

Now a musical, Burton knew just who to call: His old compatriot Danny Elfman. The composer of multiple scores for Burton’s films, Elfman helped Burton create a new storyline and write several of the songs. Elfman described it as “one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had.”

Since Elfman was writing songs for Jack Skellington, and since he was a professional musician, Burton turned to Elfman to provide the voice of Jack. Well, the singing voice at least. After the songs had been recorded Chris Sarandon was cast as the speaking voice of Jack, with the intent of him matching Elfman’s singing voice for the Pumpkin King.

The voice of Sally is provided by the legendary Catherine O’Hara (she also voices Shock, one of Oogie Boogie’s henchchildren). O’Hara, of course, plays Delia Deetz in “Beetlejuice.” Meanwhile, the voice of the Mayor of Halloweentown is provided by Glenn Shadix, who played Otho in that film.

The film begins with a prologue containing some expository narration. A few names were bandied about to provide that, including James Earl Jones and, naturally, Vincent Price. Ultimately, Ed Ivory, who voices Santa Claus as well, did double duty as the narrator. However, the soundtrack’s narration is provided by Patrick Stewart.

After the script was written and the songs were taken care of, Burton was mostly not involved. Selick has explained it as Burton having laid the egg, while Selick sat on it until it hatched. According to Selick, Burton was actually on set during filming for no more than 10 days. This was over roughly two years, mind you.

Stop-motion animation isn’t just time-consuming. It also involved a lot of props. There were 227 puppets created for the film, but those puppets then had to have multiple expressions. Jack alone had around 400 different heads that had to be swapped in as needed.

Jack Skellington was never one to stay in one little world. A figurine of Jack from this film was used in the movie “James and the Giant Peach” as the character of Captain Jack. This film was also produced by Burton and directed by Selick.

As we said, Burton wrote the poem that this movie is based on and he produced it, but this was a collaborative effort. Not everything that made its way into the story was his. For example, at one point Oogie Boogie was going to turn out to be Dr. Finkelstein, Sally’s father figure, in disguise. However, Burton apparently hated this idea so much that he reportedly ended up kicking a hole through the wall. The idea was cut.

We just mentioned Dr. Finkelstein, but you can’t glean that information for the credits. The character, played by William Hickey, is only referred to as “Evil Scientist” in the credits. His name is spoken briefly in the film a couple of times, but that’s it.

The film was re-released in 2006, and for the occasion, a special edition of the soundtrack was released as well. It featured five cover songs done by Fiona Apple, She Wants Revenge, Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, and Panic! At the Disco. Then, in 2008, Disney released “Nightmare Revisited,” a full cover album. This album features performances by The All-American Rejects, Korn, and more.

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” was going to be a Disney movie, and released as a Disney animated film. Then, the company got worried that it would be too scary for kids, and thus not appropriate for the Disney brand. Instead, they released it under their label Touchstone Pictures, which is what they used for more “adult” projects they don’t want to be associated with Disney.

Made on a $24 million budget, the movie made $50 million domestically in its first release. However, that wouldn’t be its last. The 3-D release in 2006 earned it $11.1 million more, and after that, they decided to put it back out in theaters in 2007, 2008, and 2009 as well. Then, during the pandemic, the movie was released again in 2020. This time it made $1.3 million, which was good enough to be fourth in the box office.

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” was nominated for one Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, but it lost to “Jurassic Park.” Also, it should be noted that this was before Best Animated Feature Film was a category, so it could not be nominated there. The movie did win two Saturn Awards as well, with Elfman winning for Best Music and the movie winning for Best Fantasy Film.

As we said earlier, you haven’t been able to swing a dead cat without hitting a Goth teen in a Jack Skellington or Sally shirt basically since the movie came out in 1993. Beyond all that merch, there has been a lot of “Nightmare Before Christmas” stuff released. There have been two sequel video games, a collectible card game, a tarot deck, a graphic novel, and a pop-up book, for the spooky toddlers out there.

The idea of a sequel has been bandied about for years. In 2001 there was talk of Disney doing a computer-animated sequel, but Burton talked them out of it. The idea came up again in 2019, but there hasn’t been much traction since. However, in 2021 it was announced that a sequel YA novel about Sally is in the works.