The Nightmare Before Christmas - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

musical

Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

fantasy film

Fantasy film

Fantasy films are films with fantastic themes, usually involving magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered to be distinct from science fiction film and horror film, although the genres do overlap...

directed by Henry Selick

Henry Selick

Henry Selick is an American stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Coraline...

and produced/co-written by Tim Burton

Tim Burton

Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

. It tells the story of Jack Skellington

Jack Skellington

Jack Skellington is the protagonist in the 1993 Disney film The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack is the "Pumpkin King" of Halloween Town and lives in a fantasy world based solely on the Halloween holiday...

, a being from "Halloween

Halloween

Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

Town" who opens a portal to "Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

Town". Danny Elfman

Danny Elfman

Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...

wrote the film score

Film score

A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...

and provided the singing voice of Jack, as well as other minor characters. The remaining principal voice cast includes Chris Sarandon

Chris Sarandon

Chris Sarandon is an American actor who was married to actress Susan Sarandon between 1968 and 1979. He is best known for playing Prince Humperdinck in the film The Princess Bride, the vampire Jerry Dandridge in Fright Night and Detective Mike Norris in the first entry of the Child's Play series,...

, Catherine O'Hara

Catherine O'Hara

Catherine Anne O'Hara is a Canadian-American actress and comedienne. She is well known for her comedy work on SCTV, and her roles in the films After Hours, Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and also in the mockumentary films written and directed by Christopher Guest...

, William Hickey

William Hickey (actor)

William Edward Hickey was an American actor. He was best known for his Oscar-nominated role as Don Corrado Prizzi in the John Huston 1985 film Prizzi's Honor, as well as the voice of Dr...

, Ken Page and Glenn Shadix

Glenn Shadix

William Glenn Shadix Scott , born William Glenn Shadix, was an American actor, known for his role as Otho Fenlock in Tim Burton's horror/comedy film Beetlejuice and the voice of the Mayor of Halloween Town in The Nightmare Before Christmas.-Early life and education:Shadix was born in Bessemer,...

.

The genesis of The Nightmare Before Christmas started with a poem written by Tim Burton when he was a Disney animator in the early 1980s.