If you’re from a certain generation, you’ve likely spent the final months of the year in an ongoing debate about whether the 1993 flick The Nightmare Before Christmas counts as a Halloween or Christmas film.
No, you can’t say both.
Unlike most silly debates, there are two healthy points of view here — the film is exploring the themes of Christmas and what it means to families and communties.
However, crucially... It’s set in a place called Halloween Town which is inhabited by traditionally scary creatures that count down to Halloween every year.
However, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas weighed in on this debate and I’m sorry to all the Christmas fans but you might be disappointed...
If you’ve ever found yourself embroiled in this debate, we have exactly the bit of trivia you need.
When the director was asked whether he considers it to be a Christmas or Halloween film at a 2015 Q&A at Colorado’s Telluride Horror Show film festival, he said: “Oh, boy, it’s a Halloween movie.”
So that’s that. We can debate over other things this festive season, like whether Love Actually is good, actually.
It was Henry Sellick that directed the film and not Tim Burton, as many people believe. Tim wrote the story but the direction was all down to Henry, who also directed Coraline.
Speaking about this common misconception in 2022, Henry said: ”[It] was a little unfair because it wasn’t called Tim Burton’s [The Nightmare Before Christmas] until three weeks before the film came out.
“And I would have been fine with that, if that’s what I signed up for. But Tim was in LA making two features while I directed that film.”
Let’s consider the record straight: it’s a Halloween film, directed by Henry Sellick.
Happy Halloween!
