Tim Burton has bad news for anyone hoping for The Nightmare Before Christmas 2
Tim Burton has weighed in on The Nightmare Before Christmas 2 — and it’s not exactly the news fans were hoping for.
Here's one that crops up like clockwork: the rumour mill's churning out whispers about The Nightmare Before Christmas 2 again, over three decades since the original crept onto the scene. And yet, if you were hoping for Jack Skellington's next outing, don't get your hopes up. Tim Burton himself has gone on record, and his message to the world isn't what fans were after.
Tim Burton, chatting to Vanity Fair, summed up where his head's at: 'can be a beautiful experience, but not always.' He added that he has 'no real desire' to make a sequel to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
This isn't Burton just being sentimental. He's not a sequels-are-evil purist—he did direct Batman Returns and only just delivered Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. But when it comes to revisiting Halloween Town, he's made it plain he's not interested in digging up the past for a second go, no matter how often Disney comes knocking.
The Original’s Legacy
For anyone who needs the refresher: the first Nightmare Before Christmas dropped back in the early '90s, directed by Henry Selick (not Burton, despite popular belief). It follows Jack Skellington, Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, who stumbles across Christmas Town, misinterprets the whole thing, and the next thing you know, the poor human world is swamped with genuinely nightmarish gifts. He puts things right by the end, Santa saves the day, and Jack finally gets his act together with Sally. Curtain down, all sorted.
The film wasn’t just a cult favourite—it pulled in over $108 million worldwide, and even picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. Not too shabby for something that started as a Burton poem and took ages to bring to life with stop-motion. All this made it ripe sequel territory, and to no one’s surprise, Disney started mulling it over all the way back in the early 2000s.
Globally, The Nightmare Before Christmas took in more than $108 million at the box office.
But it was actually Burton who convinced them to leave it be. His argument: don’t mess with a good thing. Given the state of studio sequels sometimes, probably a fair call.
The Many Not-Quite-Sequels
While there’s nothing doing on the film front, the story’s lived on in other guises. There's the official tie-in novel by Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, which is basically a spiritual sequel for anyone desperate for more. And then Capcom gave us the 2004 game, The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, a sort of oddball sequel that sees Jack squaring off with Oogie Boogie, again, but on a console rather than in cinemas.
As for Burton, he's got plenty lined up elsewhere, if you’re after a new fix. He’s still executive producing Netflix’s Wednesday, and according to rumour, his next film may be set in post-World War II Japan. In other words, nowhere near Halloween Town anytime soon.