Directed by Henry Selick

Written by Tim Burton (story)

Caroline Thompson (screenplay)

Michael McDowell (Adaptation)

Danny Elfman (lyrics)

STARRING
Chris Sarandon
Danny Elfman
Catherine O'Hara
William Hickey
Glenn Shadix
Paul Reubens

music by Danny Elfman

Distributed by Touchstone Pictures (original version)

Walt Disney Pictures (2006 remastered 3-D version)

Release date(s) October 22, 1993

October 20, 2006 (remastered 3-D version)

Running time 83 min.

Language English

Budget $18,000,000 (estimated)

Twas a long time ago,
longer now than it seems
In a place perhaps you've seen in your dreams.
For the story you're about to be told
Took place in the holiday worlds of old.
Now you've probably wondered where holidays come from.
If you haven't, I'd say it's time you begun.
For the holidays are the result of much fuss
And hard work for the worlds that create them for us.
Well you see now, quite simply that's all that they do,
Making one unique holiday especially for you.
But once, a calamity ever so great
Occurred when two holidays met by mistake.

There is a hidden Mickey when Jack is on the train in Christmas Town. The Steam blower puffs out a Mickey shaped cloud but it quickly turns into a rabbit shaped cloud.

The African American girl and boy in the 'real world' are wearing Mickey/Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck pajamas.

In the Spanish version for Latin America, the movie is titled "Jack's Strange World". Similarly, in the French version, the title translates
as "The Strange Christmas of Mr. Jack".

In the song, "This is Halloween", the lyrics "...tender lumplings everywhere..." refers to "Tender Lumplings," a song composed by Danny Elfman when he was with Oingo Boingo.

Tim Burton has said the original poem was inspired after seeing Halloween merchandise display in a store being taken down and replaced by a Christmas display. The juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination.

In The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack's closing, the narrator said that several years after the events of the film Jack had 4 or 5 skeleton children.

Two items were invented to facilitate the filming of the movie: One was a "light alarm" which would warn the animators if any of the stage lights failed to come on. The other was a system that enabled a puppeteer to seamlessly switch to a replacement puppet if a puppet broke during a shot. Prior to this, either situation, a light failing to come on or a puppet breaking would destroy a shot.

Two toys that Jack delivers reference Batman Returns, the film Tim Burton had directing commitments towards at the time. One is an evil duck on wheels, which is the vehicle that the Penguin drives. The other is an evil cat doll, which has the same head as the mascot for Shreck's corporation.

The teaser trailer tells us that the film was originally produced by the major Disney division, playing the movie heavily as the next generation of film making. By the time the theatrical trailer was released, the production team had changed (Touchstone Pictures, which is itself a division of Disney), and the comparisons to Walt Disney as the new great animator are gone. The reason for this was, at the time Disney did not think it proper to have a "PG" rating under the Disney banner, so it was switched to the Touchstone banner.

This was the first movie to ever be fully animated using the stop-motion technique that was favored by Tim Burton for special effects in some of his other movies for its surreal quality. The animators received Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects as a result, but lost to ILM who created the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park (1993).

Oogie Boogie is inspired by Cab Calloway, who provided character voices and musical numbers for several Fleischer Bros. cartoons; he and Santa Claus quote dialog from the Betty Boop short "The Old Man of the Mountain", when Santa asks (quoting Betty's line) "What are you going to do?", and Oogie returns Calloway's (as the Old Man) "I'm gonna do the best I can..."
At the film's end vampires are seen playing ice hockey with a pumpkin. The scene was originally shot using a model of Tim Burton's head but was replaced by the pumpkin.

This was the third Disney animated film to be theatrically re-released since The Lion King. The first two were Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. Aladdin was originally set for an IMAX re-release, but ended up released on DVD.