Whether you’re on team Halloween or team Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a must-watch for many of us in the Fall.
I was watching it on Halloween, as I usually do, as a way to transition out of Halloween mode and usher in the Christmas season, and was reminded of the fact that the idea for this film’s plot was originally conceived during a time of holiday tradition.
How the nightmare was born
Burton was inspired by seeing the Christmas decorations meshed with the freaky Halloween items in stores, perhaps thinking what we all think each year: “why are they so impatient to bring the goods out so soon?” but such is life in the retail world.
While working as an animator at Disney on films like The Fox and the Hound, Burton admired the Christmas specials that we all have seen at least 500 times and never get sick of.
Inspired by the motion capture and glowing noses of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Grinch’s knack for stealing Christmas, he crafted a reverse-Grinch poem about a Skeleton embracing Christmas a little too much…calling it The Nightmare Before Christmas, a play on the first line from the classic poem A Visit from St. Nicholas.
Disney feared that the film would be too scary for kids and produced under the banner Touchstone Pictures, and even insisted that Jack be given eyes to make those empty sockets more…friendly. Burton and director Selick stood their ground, refusing to give Jack eyes, but skeletons with eyes did surface in a certain soon-to-be Disney/PIXAR classic from 2017.
A Nightmare Before Christmas sequel?
Disney had an idea in 2001 for a sequel called The Unlucky Clover which would’ve been a computer-animated film, but Burton rejected it stating:
“I was always very protective of Nightmare not to do sequels or things of that kind, you know, ‘Jack visits Thanksgiving world’ or other kinds of things just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it… Because it’s a mass-market kind of thing, it was important to kind of keep that purity of it.”
Luckily, CollegeHumor has given us some idea as to what might’ve happened had Jack visited St. Patrick’s Day town with the video below (spoiler alert…it involves booze…lots and lots of booze).
Though we’re not likely to ever get a Nightmare Before Christmas sequel (and are probably the better off for it, as Burton stated above) we’ve had some hints over the years as to what awaits these beloved characters. Most of them in the form of video games, and some of which include the Kingdom Hearts series.
In Oogie’s Revenge, a Nightmare Before Christmas sequel in the form of a Playstation 2 game, Oogie Boogie is stitched back together by his three henchmen. He goes on a rampage taking over Halloween town and kidnapping the other holiday town leaders, while Jack is out of town searching for fresh Halloween ideas (after being bored again). Long story short, Jack defeats Oogie Boogie again and he and Sally live happily ever after…again.
In the soundtrack, which was narrated by Patrick Stewart (who originally narrated the film but was later cut), Santa reveals that he visited Jack many years later. He found him with four or five skeletal children who were musically inclined, so at least we know that Jack was a little too busy to headline a sequel anyway. The audio clip from the soundtrack can also be heard below.
A Nightmare Before Christmas book sequel
Lastly, another semi-sequel is scheduled for release in comic book form. Tokyopop will produce The Nightmare Before Christmas: Zero’s Journey, in which Jack’s pet Zero gets lost in Christmas Town and all Halloween festivities are halted in search of him. Entertainment Weekly has exclusive previews of Jack and Zero art for the comic, available here.
Would you like to have a Nightmare Before Christmas sequel in movie form? or do you believe that Jack Skellington should only live on in our hearts and in our Hot Topic socks, wallets, keychains, hats and windshield visors? in any case, I’m always happy to pop my trusty Special Edition Bluray into the player every Fall when the holidays come back around.
Merry Christmas, my fellow ScreenPlayas…unless you’re team Halloween, in which case, Happy Halloween.
Written by: Michael R Gonzalez
If you enjoy the display artwork, shared again below, it was contributed by artist Lotopauanka. Head on over to her Instagram page for more of her work!
