Why ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ will never die

On its 30-year anniversary, the Halloween-and-Christmas classic feels eternal.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is kind of an anti-Disney movie. Sure, it’s produced by Walt Disney Studios, and you can find it on the Disney+ streaming service, and its characters can be found at the film studio’s namesake theme parks. But Disney has always kept the film at arm’s length—it was originally released under its Touchstone Pictures label, a defunct subsidiary that housed adult titles like Pretty Woman, Signs, and Sister Act. “They were afraid it might hurt their brand,” Nightmare director Henry Sellick recently told The New York Times. Given that the movie centers on a plot to kidnap Santa Claus and hijack Christmas for an anthropomorphic skeleton’s own self-aggrandizement, Sellick’s admission comes as no real surprise.

Read Full Story