5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

The more you know…

1. Disney wanted Jack to have eyes, but Burton and Selick wouldn’t change Jack’s already hollow eyes.
   
2. Danny Elfman didn’t just give Jack his singing voice, but also Barrel’s and the ‘menacing clown with the tear away face.’ Burton also used a lot of people from his past collaborations to lend their voices to characters too – such as Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure) as Lock, Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice) as Shock and Sally and Glenn Shadix (Beetlejuice) as the mayor of Halloween Town.
   
3. Originally, Burton imagined the film as a Christmas television special. However when he pitched the idea, no-one wanted to take it on until it was pitched as a full-length feature film.
   
4. Burton actually rejected a CGI sequel offer for film – he had no interest in one. Burton has stated that, “I was always very protective of (The Nightmare Before Christmas), 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 not a mass-market kind of thing, it was important to kind of keep that purity of it. I try to respect people and keep the purity of the project as much as possible.”
   
5. Shooting began before the script was fully completed for the film, as one minute of the movie took about a week to shoot.