Why We Never Got Nightmare Before Christmas 2
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a beloved classic, one of the most singularly quirky and amazing animated films, holiday movies, and musicals of all time, all rolled into one. Coming from the mind of producer Tim Burton and bearing his distinct visual stamp, the stop-motion animated feature has become a staple of the holidays since its 1993 release.
One of the true joys of The Nightmare Before Christmas is how amazingly true it is to the tone and spirit of both Halloween and Christmas, and it’s easy to see why the film has become a yearly tradition for so many. But considering its financial and critical success and its impact on the world of pop culture, what’s not so easy to puzzle out is why we never got a sequel to the classic film. Why did we never get The Nightmare Before Christmas 2?
It’s not like the idea hasn’t been kicked around. In particular, the film’s director Henry Selick – who would go on to work on two additional stop-motion features, 2006’s James and the Giant Peach and 2009’s Coraline – has gone on record stating that while he could be enticed to return to Halloween Town. But the notion was complicated by Disney. It seems that the House of Mouse was only interested in a sequel to the classic on one specific condition – one that Selick wasn’t too keen on.
In a 2009 interview, Selick revealed that discussions about a sequel had in fact taken place, saying,
“A few years back, Disney spoke to me and the sad thing was at the time, they said, ‘If we do a sequel, it will have to be CG.’ I was really disappointed. I asked why, and they didn’t think stop-motion was a viable way to make movies […] I don’t think Tim would allow a CG sequel. There’s been a few stories proposed and a few discussions, but that’s really Tim’s decision.”
In sharing this, Selick hit upon one major roadblock to any sequel to The Nightmare Before Christmas: Burton, who first conceived the story and characters in a poem he wrote as a young man in the early ’80s. In a 2006 interview with MTV News, the filmmaker indicated that he may not be terribly open to the idea of any sequel, CG or otherwise. He told MTV,
“I was always very protective of [the movie], 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.”
That’s certainly understandable, but even if some persistent executive had been able to convince Burton to make The Nightmare Before Christmas 2 any way he wanted, there were many years during which it just wouldn’t have been possible – because the filmmaker wasn’t speaking to his star, Danny Elfman, who provided Jack’s singing voice.
In case you’re not familiar with Elfman, you should know that you are, in fact, familiar with Elfman. The former front man for new wave pioneers Oingo Boingo, Elfman has composed so much music for film and television – including the iconic Simpsons theme – that it’d be virtually impossible to have never heard any of his work.
Elfman has worked with Burton on no fewer than 16 films, and during the course of their long professional relationship, the two famously eccentric personalities didn’t always play nice together. In a 2015 interview, Elfman revealed that the pair had a big blow up right after work on The Nightmare Before Christmas was completed – one which would have kept the musical voice of Jack from participating in any sequel for some time. Elfman recalled,
“It was in the middle of a very intense period […] and I think things came to a boil. It’s inevitable that in over a quarter of a century, two personalities like us – and I can’t pretend that I’m not volatile and was more so then – there’s gotta be some kind of explosion.”
The pair resolved their differences several years later, but they did lose a lot of time during which The Nightmare Before Christmas was fresh in the minds of the movie-going public.
To be sure, the original film would be a tough act to follow, even assuming that Burton, Elfman, and Selick could be coaxed back on board. You may have heard, however, that the House of Mouse has recently been diving into its archives in pursuit of box office gold – meaning that if we ever do get more Nightmare Before Christmas, it may not necessarily be in the form of a sequel.
Disney’s recent live-action remakes of its classic animated properties have, for the most part, done bonkers box office. Interestingly, the sole exception is 2019’s Dumbo, a comparative flop that just happened to have been directed by Tim Burton – not that this would keep Disney from eyeing The Nightmare Before Christmas for the live-action treatment.
#NightmareBeforeChristmas #TimBurton
