Disney didn’t want to call The Nightmare Before Christmas a Disney movie before it got really popular
The Mouse House was even hesitant to call the iconic stop-motion musical a Disney film, said director Henry Selick
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We all know Disney loves to make a buck (and multiple sequels) off of any IP that gets butts in seats and kids in stores. Still, you might be surprised to hear that the Mouse House didn’t initially think a seven-ish-foot-tall skeleton and a sack full of pests were as safe a bet as Cinderella or The Lion King. While stop-motion creep-fest The Nightmare Before Christmas is nothing short of a classic 30 years on from its original release, execs apparently used to be pretty spooked by the film.
“There was very little merchandising at first, but then Disney realized the film’s growing in popularity and they capitalized on that,” director Henry Selick recently told People. “Finally, Disney called it a Disney film because originally, they were afraid it was too strange, [and] it would damage their brand.” The film was originally released under former label Touchstone to add further separation, he added.
Now, Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland transform into Halloween Town every year around this time for their annual Halloween party, Oogie Boogie Bash (no real bugs, thank goodness), complete with a festive Haunted Mansion re-theme and meet-and-greet with the Boogie Man himself. “It didn’t seem to happen suddenly. It was just this steady growth, and then it ramped way up,” Selick added.
Chris Sarandon, who voices Jack, also chimed in about why the film resonated with so many people over the years. “A lot of young people come up to me and say, ‘This was a movie that made me feel like I belonged,’ because it was so strange and at the same time so beautiful, and its message was so positive,” he said. “And as it turns out, they, in turn, now are watching it with their children.” If only Disney would take a break from their endless churn of remakes and ride movies, they might have a generational hit like this on their hands once again.
25 Comments
Well Disney probably didn’t want to ruin Star Wars, but they did.
It may just be a matter of playing the odds with Disney and the amount of content they have produced but I will say that imho they have been involved with more good Star Wars products then Lucas was. I know there are sects of millennials and Gen Z who defend the prequels but I will never got with their camp.
Y’know, as soon as I hit ‘post’ my brain started screaming “Y’know Spider, Saint George has done as much to wreck his own creation as Disney has!”
I guess, I say “Y’know” a lot.
Yeah, I’m not sure releasing six movies, three of them bad, and an atrocious holiday special over the course of 30 years puts Lucasfilm in a great position to argue batting average.I also tend to be of the view that it’s better to have more content, as long as at least some of it is good. The Disney Star Wars films and TV shows include some real highs, with Andor, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, the early seasons of The Mandalorian. A lot of it is also less good, but it’s easy enough to ignore that stuff or watch it once and forget it. The fact that Book of Boba Fett exists doesn’t meaningfully harm me, while the good content makes my life richer.
This is the correct take.
Now and again I rank them in my head and the hit-to-miss ratio seems about the same before and after the acquisition.I think there’s an element of recency bias here, where the ST is fresh in peoples memories, while the PT benefits from nostalgia goggles. Not to mention the best stuff is in side-content like Rogue One and Andor, which got less exposure than the abysmal E9.
To be fair, George Lucas beat them to it.
My youngest son has been obsessed with Nightmare Before Christmas since he was very little(he is 8 now). One of the biggest joys he had was getting to meet “the real” Jack and Sally at Disney World during one of those overpriced Christmas Party events.It was actually realy cool. Disney at Christmas is chaotic and stressful and way to crowded but you always hear stories of “Disney Magic” if you just ask for help and it happened for us and my son. The line to see Jack was absolutely insane, like a 2 hour wait+ for a 4 hour event. My son is on the spectrum and my wife is disabled so waiting in that long of a line would have just been impossible. We asked a cast member if there was a fast pass option or something, assuming we would bite the bullet and pay more to get through the line but we met a nice kid who said “Come back to the gift shop exit in an hour and I will see what I can do” and just like that we did what he said and he walked us right up and my son got extra time with them both. It was really cool. It just pays to ask for help sometimes and I just felt like sharing a story where Disney was not evil. The rest of that Christmas trip to Disney was pure hell BTW(The other story from that trip involves a very crowded Disney Bus stuck in traffic with its back emergency door malfunctioning so the alarm kept going off, for over two hours) and it really soured me on the parks in general(and I am a theme park nerd) but that one moment was magical.
Disney as a corporation is as ruthless as they come.But so many of the actual cast members love working there because they get to do the kind of things you describe above.
This. Whatever else you can say about Disney as a company, visiting the parks can be genuinely joyful.
Agreed. I have very little love for Disney outside of baseline nostalgia, but I went to WDW a few years ago and immediately became a kid again. It’s legitimately an amazing experience.
That’s beautiful, man. My son is seven and on the spectrum (last Saturday’s Halloween kid party was a shitshow that every single adult helped make better with understanding and patience), and last night he asked if we could watch Nightmare after dinner. It’s been a fave since he was three. I said “Sure!” and he queued it up while I finished clearing our plates, then he came in and said in a total monotone “I’m old enough to think it’s scary now.”
That’s funny, my youngest is 8 and in years past he was absolutely fearless when it came to “spooky” things but this year he has started to be scared of some of the Halloween stuff. Not Jack though, he loves that movie. Now my 15 year old absolutely does not love Nightmare Before Christmas and will leave the room if its on. He says the long fingers give him the creeps.
Disney above all else looks out for the brand.The film was originally released under former label Touchstone to add further separation, he added.Basically everything PG and up was released under Touchstone during the 80s and 90s. Pirates of the Caribbean (in 2003! Remember 2003?) was one of the first major PG-13 releases to actually be a “Disney” release.
The difference is that The Nightmare Before Christmas was initially touted as a Disney film. The teaser trailer was just some landscape footage of the “What’s This?” scene with maybe like a few seconds of Jack’s hand touting Tim Burton as a visionary and comparing him to Walt Disney.
“The difference is that The Nightmare Before Christmas was initially touted as a Disney film.”
So the article is bullshit then.
You’re forgetting Flight of the Navigator, which was a PG movie released by Disney in 1986. The Black Cauldron was also PG in 1985.One of the odder “not Disney” releases was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? which was also a Touchstone release, but then it was so popular they started making Roger Rabbit shorts and putting them in front of Disney movies.
That’s not entirely true. There were tons of PG-rated films released under the Disney branding during that time, many of which had a lot more “adult” content that TNBC. That includes The Mighty Ducks, a film about an alcoholic who coaches pee-wee hockey as punishment for a DUI charge, and Hocus Pocus, a film that makes a huge deal out of a teenage character’s virginity and contains a bunch of other age-inappropriate jokes. Both of those came out within roughly a year of TNBC. The real reason is because Disney was terrified of releasing another dark, scary movie under the WDP branding after the triple-whammy of Black Cauldron, Return to Oz, and Something Wicked This Way Comes had bombed hard enough to seriously damage the brand’s reputation (not to mention the other adult-oriented fare of the time period which also played a part). Eisner took over right around the time these films were released (just before the former 2 and just after the third) and sought, above all else, in his early tenure to restore the cultural cachet of the Disney brand. He desperately wanted Disney, the company, to branch out to teens and adults, but also for people to strictly associate Disney, the brand, with family-friendly entertainment—hence the creation of Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures and the acquisition of Miramax/Dimension. He didn’t personally create the Touchstone label—that was his predecessor, Ron Miller—but he oversaw its first release, Splash, in 1989. Interestingly, the Splash Mountain ride was named for that film to coincide with its release (despite the Song of the South theming), and was built largely because Eisner’s teenage son thought the Disney parks were too boring and kid-friendly.
Yeah this whole story is weird in that it’s not new news at all.
Yeah, and its not like it was some great secret that Touchstone was Disney in all but name.
Well sure, but are people finally brave enough to call it a Henry Selick movie?
“Disney’s Henry Selick’s Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas”
I always wondered if it had anything to do with the movie showing up as a level in the Kingdom Hearts series. That was actually my first exposure to it.
There’s also been a PS2 game, a GBA game, & a handful of novel/comic book/manga sequels/prequels– I’ve always wondered if Henry Selick & Tim Burton even know about those, how they feel about them if they do, & if they’d remain canon if a movie sequel/prequel/whatever was actually made (I doubt they would).
This might interest you:https://www.polygon.com/gaming/23913274/nightmare-before-christmas-sequel-video-game-capcom
Same with Gargoyles. There was no “Disney’s” prefix until way after the show was cancelled and was beloved by a passionate fandom.Some old school Disney suits wanted to distance themselves from it because, as Greg Weisman relates, they didn’t think the show was on-brand wholesome.