The holiday season is approaching, and many popular holiday movies are beginning to resurge. One of the more popular films being watched is “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” a movie that combines both Halloween and Christmas.
The 1993 film “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, became a success soon after its release. However, movie executives were originally skeptical about the film.
“The initial idea of the movie arises from a poem that Burton wrote detailing creepy characters and frights who explore Christmas in their macabre fashion,” states Houston Symphony.
Burton and Selick received many interesting thoughts and questions from directing companies because it was considered “too dark” or “scary for young audiences,” but regardless, it would eventually get the green light to start production.
Although Selick directed and Burton produced “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Burton found out in 1990 that Disney would have all film rights to the movie. The production of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” started in July of 1991. The movie was produced using stop-motion animation, taking around three and a half years to be completed.
According to IMDB, the film was eventually released on Oct. 9, 1993 at the New York Film Festival Premiere. Shortly after that, on Oct. 23, 1993, the film had its theatrical release.
Despite the film’s success and large fanbase, Burton does not plan to make any more “The Nightmare Before Christmas” films. “I’ve done sequels, I’ve done other things, I’ve done reboots, I’ve done all that shit, right? I don’t want that to happen to this. It’s nice that people are maybe interested [in another one], but I’m not,” Burton told Empire.
He continued, “I feel like that old guy who owns a little piece of property and won’t sell to the big power plant that wants to take my land.”
Time for some fun facts!
- The animators had to shoot at a rate of 24 frames per second, which means there were 110,000 frames in total.
- The box office made $50 million off the movie.
- The reason Jack Skellington’s ghost dog Zero has a red nose is because he is a reference to the classic Christmas character, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.
- Tim Burton has produced 20 movies, five of those being animated movies, with some of the most well-known being “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), “James and the Giant Peach” (1996) “The Corpse Bride” (2005), “9” (2009), and last but not least, “Frankenweenie” (2012).
