The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and written by Caroline Thompson. It tells the tale of Jack Skellington, King of Halloween Town, who stumbles upon Christmas Town and becomes obsessed with celebrating the holiday himself. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast includes Chris Sarandon, Ken Page, Catherine O'Hara, Glenn Shadix, William Hickey, Paul Reubens and Ed Ivory.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated from a poem written by Tim Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the critical success of Vincent that same year, Burton began to consider developing the story 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 the Walt Disney Studios. Production, under Burton and Denise Di Novi, started in July 1991. Disney initially released the film through the Touchstone Pictures label because the studio believed the film's Gothic tone would be "too dark and scary for kids."