Mike Lowery
With everything from ‘’Aladdin’’ to ‘’The Lion King’’, ‘’Dumbo’’ and “Toy Story” renewing their leases at the House of Mouse this year, you won’t be at all surprised to hear what could be next on the brand restitution card at Disney.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas”, the gloriously enchanting and everlastingly entertaining stop-motion film (sometimes mistaken for a Tim Burton film but actually the work of Henry Selick; with Burton responsible for the story and producing), is as popular today as it was when it was released in October of 1993 – maybe even more so. With Disney continuing to exploit the brand big-time in recent years, bringing out fresh t-shirts, snow globes, collectible figures, re-issuing the film every holiday season and pushing other tie-in merchandising for the halloweeny-christmas film, the studio clearly doesn’t plan to let the movie disappear from the public subconscious anytime soon.
And if this latest tip is anything to go by, Jack Skellington is going to become just a permanent fixture of the next decade too.
There’s talk at Disney to “do something with “Nightmare Before Christmas” – probably a sequel but live-action possible” we’ve been informed (the tip comes from someone who has given Moviehole credible intent in the past; in particular, they were spot-on with the “Backdraft 2” scoop they offered us).
Now that doesn’t mean there’s a live-action “Nightmare” movie on the way – would that even work? I don’t know… – it just means that Disney are considering all options for some sort of sequel or follow-up, and one of those is having “Nightmare Before Christmas” go the way of their “Lion King”, “Aladdin” and “Dumbo” remakes and have us humans headline it. No surprise, really.
On the other hand, maybe they’ll give us a standard stop-motion sequel and heck, if they can come up with a script that’s decent, I think fans would much prefer that over seeing an A-lister get about in a skeleton-suit.
Either way, there’s definitely some “Nightmare Before Christmas” talks, and I guess Disney will look at how some of their other returning brands, like the aforesaid live-action remakes, go before locking in their return to Halloweentown.
In 2018, TokyoPop released a comic-book sequel to the film, “Nightmare Before Christmas: Zero’s Journey,” which followed Jack Skellington’s dog, Zero, as he gets lost in Christmas Town.
