Hollywood Tonight presents Walt Disney Pictures classic The Nightmare Before Christmas synopsis and stills

“’Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems, in a place perhaps you’ve seen in your dreams…”

—Santa in Tim Burton’s THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  Adding a new dimension to a tradition that began 14 years ago, Tim Burton’s hippest of holiday classics, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, returns to select theaters this year, presented in spectacular Disney Digital 3-D™. The film made its 3-D debut in 2006 to screams of delight from its legions of fans and is now back for more ghoulish fun. This dazzling 3-D NIGHTMARE offers a frightfully fun, eye-popping trip into a universe of magic and wonder that remains unlike any other.

  The film’s transformation was led by the original filmmaking team of Academy Award®-nominated writer/producer Tim Burton (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Corpse Bride”) and director Henry Selick (“James and the Giant Peach”)—and was turned into reality through an intense, frame-by-frame digitizing process spearheaded by the technical wizards at Industrial Light & Magic, in collaboration with In-Three, Inc., and driven by a passion for the film’s visual splendor and timeless (not to mention occasionally headless) characters.

   Donning their state-of-the-art, polarized 3-D glasses, audiences will now have the chance to get truly up close and bone-rattlingly personal with the film’s cast of mischievously macabre ghosts and goblins.

   They’ll be transported directly into the three-dimensional center of the haunted house-like environs of Halloweentown as its bored Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington, attempts to take over the festive Christmas season for a change of pace. Against the advice of Sally (Catherine O’Hara), the lonely rag doll who has secret feelings for him, Jack enlists three trick-or-treaters—Lock, Shock, and Barrel—to help him kidnap Santa Claus. But even when Jack realizes his mistake, he’ll have to contend with the evil Oogie Boogie before he can turn things around and restore the holiday’s cheer.

   Fueled by an unforgettable Grammy®-nominated soundtrack featuring ten infectiously spooky songs by Oscar® nominee Danny Elfman (“Corpse Bride,” “Big Fish”), who also provided the singing voice for Jack, Tim Burton’s THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 3-D remains a madcap musical romp that sets the tone for a multitude of Halloween and holiday fun.

ADDING A NEW DIMENSION TO A CLASSIC

   A landmark film in its genre, the 1993 release of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS combined the power, enchantment and artistry of stop-motion animation with technological wizardry to create a moviegoing experience that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of die-hard fans. It simultaneously became an all-time family favorite and attained permanent cult status among the cool. Just as its playful, pitch-perfect sense of Halloween fun made it a holiday standard, its mischievously dark humor and no-holds-barred creativity has made it an enduring video hit among college kids and hipsters— who admire it, quote it, sing it and even dress the parts at Halloween. For years, every Halloween has been turned into NIGHTMARE season at Hollywood’s legendary El Capitan Theatre, which screens the film each October to ever-growing audiences.

   Part ghostly love story, part upside-down holiday celebration and part toe-tappingly offbeat musical, this NIGHTMARE was always multidimensional. But now, the classic film that had audiences falling in love with one of the most painstakingly handmade of all animation processes has been brought hurtling into the 21st century and transformed for a new generation to experience in Disney Digital 3-D™, expanding its legacy of innovation.

   The exciting Disney Digital 3-D™ process debuted with the animated hit “Chicken Little” and was most recently seen in the studio’s 2007 animated offering “Meet the Robinsons.” But the 3-D conversion process for THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS remains in a category all its own. The film marks the first time a once-analog 2-D film has been turned into a wholly digital 3-D film. For Walt Disney Animation Studios, the project represents a truly rare opportunity to allow audiences to experience a beloved classic from an entirely fresh perspective—from within the very fabric of the story’s unabashedly imaginative realm.

   “This was a very special project for us—lending exciting new life to a film and characters that continue to be a tremendous success,” says Don Hahn, an Oscar®-nominated producer (“Beauty and the Beast,”

   “Lion King”) and the producer of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS 3-D. “Audiences have long associated 3-D with a story that is fun, scary or both, and with this film, they get it all. You feel like you’re right there in that amazing world with the puppets, not merely watching the story go by on the screen. When the snow falls, it’s falling right on you. When a character jumps out, he jumps over the head of the person in front of you. It literally brings an extra dimension to what has become a modern holiday classic.”

   Hahn continues: “THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS was part of the Golden Age of Animation in the early 1990s, during the period when Disney was also doing ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King.’ It became its own unique part of Disney’s animation heritage—a haunted-house Halloween movie with a wonderful heart, a Broadway-style musical for families, and a beautiful example of how stopmotion animation can work for audiences. Back then, it already had such an unusual and risk-taking combination of elements, adding the new, technologically advanced digital 3-D into the mix seemed entirely natural.” Long before embarking on the project, Disney executives asked their partners in Digital 3-D at Industrial Light & Magic to do a test run—digitizing a brief snippet of the film to see if the idea would sink or soar. The results were, in turn, screened for Tim Burton.

   His response was effusive. “What’s amazing is that because of the 3-D process, audiences will really get to see the texture of the puppets,” Burton says. “When we were making the movie, we got to feel in our hearts like our characters were real—when you see it in 3-D; it just takes it that much further. Everything comes to life, and you can literally see in through the eye sockets of Jack Skellington.”

   Meanwhile, when director Henry Selick first heard about the idea, he admits he was, well, a little spooked and quite skeptical—which made him even more surprised when he was completely won over by ILM’s work in collaboration with In-Three, Inc. “I honestly wasn’t too excited about the idea at first because, as amazing as modern technology is, I was concerned that it wouldn’t look good, that it would be a kind of Frankenstein’s monster,” Selick comments. “I was afraid it would come off looking like a bunch of cutouts and disconnected layers.”

   “But as they began to show me more footage, my jaw started to drop. I was astonished by what they were achieving,” Selick continues. “They were being incredibly respectful of the original material, and it wasn’t gimmicky at all. Even though the technology is incredibly advanced, they were managing to really keep intact the handmade quality of the film. It actually took me back to how exciting it was when we were first making the film years ago and all these characters started to come to life.”