The Nightmare Before Christmas at 30: Henry Selick shares the Tim Burton cameo that nearly happened

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is marketing trickery at its most contentious.

Directed by feature first-timer Henry Selick; yes, this pumpkin-spiced stop-motion classic sprouted from the imagination of the Edward Scissorhands genius before his Hollywood career took off, but its enchanting timelessness boils down to the skill and vision of Selick and his team of animators.

In a Yahoo UK exclusive marking 30 years since his film first spread that dark festive cheer through cinemas, Selick tells us that such was his appreciation for the opportunity at the time, he devised a gnarly homage to Burton before ultimately chickening out.

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"At the end when everything's happy again and snow and Christmas has come to Halloween Town, we have the vampires playing ice hockey and they hit a pumpkin right at the camera past the lens. We shot one with Tim Burton's head and I was worried that he might not have time to see [the rushes]," he recalls.

"What if he didn't like it? So I shot another version right away without his head and I still never heard if Tim would've approved or disapproved!"

Another late alteration concerned the Clown with the Tearaway Face – "here in a flash and gone without a trace!" – who was at one point supposed to unmask a "pretty horrific and bloody" chasm instead of the blank void we see in the final cut. Burton, who "showed up at the very end with his own editor", trimmed back the evil shenanigans of trick-or-treaters Lock, Shock and Barrel in order to make them "a little friendlier", too.

Gratitude via decapitation aside, Nightmare was conceived as a poem by Burton, with just Jack Skellington, his ghost dog Zero and Sandy Claws appearing as fully formed characters, which he eventually pitched as a short TV special to the House of Mouse.

Fatefully, though, Disney didn't bite and he switched lanes to caped crusading for Warner Bros – a $411m box office haul for the studio ensued in 1989 as Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson duked it out for him in Gotham City, and Burton never looked back.

"I had done a lot of work in stop-motion for MTV, a lot of station idents. I did a pilot for a series called Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions and then out of the blue I got a visit from Tim's associate, this guy called Rick Heinrichs," explains Selick.

"He gave me the news that Disney wanted Tim to come back and do movies with them. Tim was gonna be busy directing a sequel to the first Batman film and then another movie, so he asked me if I would direct The Nightmare Before Christmas for him."

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So, what had Burton seen in Selick to entrust him with this passion project?

"We had a lot of shared sensibilities – interested in sort of dark, scary, but fun subject matter and imagery," says the filmmaker, who would later bring these idiosyncrasies to James and the Giant Peach and Coraline.

"I just think we knew each other on a gut level of trust. We'd become friends, we'd gone to art exhibits and movies together, and so forth. German expressionism was one of our favourite areas of inspiration."

Home to the iconic Jack the Pumpkin King (voiced by both Chris Sarandon and composer Danny Elfman) and Sally (Catherine O'Hara), as well as haunted trees, needy mayors, werewolves, zombies and witches, Halloween Town is an explosion of expressionism. This crooked and angular microcosm also plays host to one of the most adored love stories ever committed to celluloid – further immortalised in the Blink-182 hit 'I Miss You' – as Dr. Finkelstein's emancipated ragdoll falls deeply for the restless 'bone daddy'.

"I think it was the pacing in the story," suggests Selick, "It wasn't one of these where they gradually get to know each other, have their difficulties, then overcome their difficulties.

"Here's Jack, this super self-centred kind of guy, completely unaware of this admirer who sees that he's flawed and is probably making the biggest mistake of his life in taking over Christmas. She's a deep thinker and it only really comes together at the end when Jack realises she's been there all along helping him. So it's sort of like a eureka moment to realise 'she loves me and guess what? I love her too'.

"It just follows a different trajectory than most love stories in films. She's alone up there on the spiral hill and then Jack shows up singing and emoting, and slowly walks up to her. I just think the timing of that moment and his revelation, it's one of the first times he steps outside himself. That's what gives it its power."

Having brought in "over a billion dollars from the merchandising", you'd expect Nightmare to creep into prequel, sequel, or even live-action remake meetings at Disney HQ.

Selick confirms this with a laugh; "Some of the artists did drawings of children [Jack and Sally] might have that were really weird looking. Cute and fun, but still... a Frankenstein monster woman and a skeleton?

"There's been discussions of sequels off and on forever" he adds, "and I'm really glad that Tim so far has felt that would be a big mistake. When you make something that really works well – that took a number of years for it to really grow and catch on, there may be the desire for a sequel from audiences, but it's a very risky thing.

"[Disney] has approached me a couple of times and the first time they said: 'But of course it would have to be CG now...' and that was a dealbreaker for me. I just said: 'Well the whole point is it's stop-motion... it's very charming, it's handmade, it's not super-slick like CG animation'.

"A few other times they've approached me but it was always gonna be Tim's final decision, not mine. He was definitely against a CG version but also pretty much against any sort of a sequel. I can only pray [the live-action treatment doesn't materialise] because that would be utterly bizarre."

Three decades down the line, only The Snowman elicits an equal demand for animated annual viewing – dream on, fans of The Polar Express! – although Nightmare will forevermore linger in unique territory as a cross-seasonal sensation.

And yet, its legacy was far from expected.

"At the beginning, I felt maybe there's too many songs for the regular public who are not used to that many songs in an animated film," admits Selick, whose encounters with fans on the street typically result in the unveiling of body art.

"But some of the things that might've been seen as weaknesses; it's originality, it's sense of weirdness and craziness, over the years proved to be strengths. People got used to it, they fell in love with all those songs and so those things that may have hurt it initially were the things helping turn it into this film with a strong legacy, and never-ending audience."

He proudly signs off with: "99% of our efforts ended up on the screen. Most movies, there's a lot of politics, a lot of lost battles. Sometimes the best things end up on the cutting room floor, or energy is wasted in the politics. It didn't get watered down or blunted, it's almost all as intended."

The Nightmare Before Christmas is available to stream on Disney+.