The Nightmare Before Christmas narrative location Halloween Town
The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film directed by Henry Selick (in his feature directorial debut) and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of "Halloween Town", who stumbles upon "Christmas Town" and schemes to take over the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.
The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Burton began to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or a half-hour television special, to no avail. Over the years, Burton's thoughts regularly returned to the project, and, in 1990, he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco; Disney initially released the film through Touchstone Pictures because the studio believed the film would be "too dark and scary for kids".The film met with critical success upon release, earning praise for its animation (particularly the innovation of the stop-motion art form), characters, songs and score. While only a modest box office hit at first, it has since garnered a large cult following. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a first for an animated film, but lost to Jurassic Park. The film has been reissued by Walt Disney Pictures and was re-released annually in Disney Digital 3-D from 2006 until 2010.