Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated 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 composed the score and songs and provided Jack's singing voice, while 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 originally released the film under the Touchstone Pictures banner because the studio believed the film's Gothic tone would be "too dark and scary for kids".
The Nightmare Before Christmas premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 9, 1993, and was given a limited release on October 13, before a wide theatrical release on October 29 by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. The film was met with critical and commercial success upon release, and has since garnered a cult following. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a first for an animated film. Thirteen years after its initial release, the film was reissued by Walt Disney Pictures and was re-released annually from 2006 until 2010.
In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
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