Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is a 1993 American stop motion musical fantasy-thriller film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to "Christmas Town" and decides to celebrate the holiday, with some dastardly and comical consequences. Danny Elfman wrote the film score and provided the singing voice of Jack, as well as other minor characters. The remaining principal voice cast includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens and Glenn Shadix. A young Greg Proops also provides the voice of various characters in this film. Debi Durst, who guest-starred on the UK version of Whose Line? also provided voice work.
The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Tim Burton in 1982, while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios. With the success of Vincent in the same year, the Walt Disney Studios started to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or 30-minute television special. Over the years, Burton's thoughts regularly returned to the project, and in 1990, he made a development deal with Disney. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco. Disney decided to release the film under their Touchstone Pictures banner because they thought the movie would be "too dark, and scary for kids."
The Nightmare Before Christmas was met with both critical and financial success. The film has since been reissued by Walt Disney Pictures and re-released annually in the Disney Digital 3-D format from 2006 until 2009, making it the first stop-motion animated feature to be entirely converted to 3-D.