- Henry Selick reveals the Pumpkin King has made more big screen appearances than people realise
- The Nightmare Before Christmas just celebrated it’s 30th anniversary
- Jack Skellington had also made cameos in Tim Burton films pre-Nightmare
Over 30 years since its release, The Nightmare Before Christmas remains an anomaly, being a Disney film that was wildly successful both critically and commercially, beloved by mltiple generations since its release, yet has remained pretty much a standalone feature. No sequels or shorts or cartoons or much of anything outside merchandise and re-releases of the original film have ever been produced.
Although the film’s main character may have more silver screen appearances than people realise.
Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, was a character developed for years by Tim Burton while the director worked at Disney. Burton, however, did not direct A Nightmare Before Christmas, instead leaving those duties to Henry Selick. But Burton had already slipped early ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ cameos for Jack into Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) before Halloween Town’s favourite son was properly unveiled in 1993.
And Selick has continued the tradition of hiding Jack in plain sight in his own works, as the director revealed in a recent interview with GamesRadar+.
“If you look very, very carefully, you might find that there’s some image of Jack in every other film I’ve made,” Selick explained, “look at breakfast in Coraline, you might find something in the breakfast.”
Sure enough, in Coraline’s breakfast scene, when an egg is being cracked into the bowl, the egg yolk resembles a certain Skellington’s face. But Selick’s references to the Pumpkin King aren’t restricted to the 2009 cult classic. In 1996’s James and The Giant Peach, also produced by Burton, a pirate referred to as Skellington makes a brief appearance. Then, in 2022’s Wendell and Wild, Jack’s bones are uncovered during the credits of the Netflix stop-motion feature.
While Burton and Selick have both repeatedly ruled out a sequel to Nightmare being produced, Selick did reveal that he would be open to a prequel, focusing on how Jack became the Pumpkin King, in an interview with People, last year.
