It’s been thirty years since the release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, so it’s somewhat surprising that the film hasn’t received any sequels or a reboot, and that’s just how Tim Burton wants it.
While speaking with Empire, Tim Burton explained why he doesn’t want to see a reboot of The Nightmare Before Christmas, or any type of followup. “To me the movie is very important,” Burton said. “I’ve done sequels, I’ve done other things, I’ve done reboots, I’ve done all that shit, right? I don’t want that to happen to this. It’s nice that people are maybe interested [in another one], but I’m not. I feel like that old guy who owns a little piece of property and won’t sell to the big power-plant that wants to take my land. ‘Get off of my land!’“
The character of Jack Skellington remains especially personal to Tim Burton. “[A] character that’s perceived as dark, but is really light,” Burton said. “Those are the kinds of things that I love, whether it’s [Edward] Scissorhands or Batman, characters that have that. It represented all those feelings that I had. I was perceived as this dark character, when I didn’t feel that way. So it was a very personal character.“
With the different holiday worlds Jack had access to in the first movie, you might imagine that Disney would have been keen to exploit that for a slew of sequels; and they likely would have had the film been a bigger hit. The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick isn’t quite as down on the idea of a sequel as Tim Burton seems to be, but he has another idea in mind. “It might be more interesting to do a prequel,” said Selick last month. “There might be a more interesting story there about how Jack became the King of Halloweentown.“
As fun as it might be to enter that world once again, it would be all too easy for a sequel or reboot to ruin the reputation that The Nightmare Before Christmas has built over the last three decades.
Would you like to see a sequel, prequel, or reboot to The Nightmare Before Christmas?