Producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is a well-loved animated film full of hilarious jokes. However, Selick has now revealed that the film cut one extremely funny joke featuring a Burton’s head.
“There’s a shot — and I really regret replacing it — at the very end of the film when Jack comes back and then Sandy Claws flies overhead and there’s snow and Christmas comes to Halloween Town,” Selick told The Hollywood Reporter. “We show a lot of Halloween Towners enjoying winter sports and snow and you see the vampires playing hockey and they hit the puck right at the camera — and originally it was Tim Burton’s head. And it was really funny.”
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Selick then explained why the joke was cut, saying, “And Denise Di Novi or one of the Hollywood producers told me, ‘I don’t think Tim’s going to like that.’ And I feel so stupid for not just asking him. But that’s one of the shots that we reshot and we put in a pumpkin instead. I don’t know if that shot still exists, but I’d love to replace the one in there and I’m sure Tim would love it.”
Directed by Selick and produced and conceived by Burton, the stop-motion animated Nightmare Before Christmas tells the story of Jack Skellington, the restless king of Halloween Town, who is reinvigorated by his discovery of Christmas Town, and decides to make the holiday his own. The movie, which was released in 1993, earned over $76 million at the box office during its run, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects in the process.
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