Santa Claus in film Another recent devious mall Santa was played by Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa" (2003), a film which gained normally family-friendly Disney "bad press". Tim Burton's stop-action animated musical film, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), depicts Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, wanting to become Santa Claus after an accidental visit to Christmas Town. After the mostly well-meaning but clueless Halloween citizens capture Santa, they try to take over Christmas with disastrous results; the real Santa is almost killed by the Oogie Boogie Man. Santa is voiced here by Ed Ivory, and in the video game spin-offs, Corey
Tim Burton Walter of stealing credit for her paintings. The script was written by the screenwriters behind Burton's "Ed Wood", Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. The film, pitched a few years earlier, was intended to be directed by Alexander and Karaszewski and produced by Burton, featuring Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Reynolds as its leads. Filming began in Vancouver, British Columbia, in mid-2013. The film was distributed by The Weinstein Company and released in U.S. theaters on December 25, 2014. It received generally positive reviews from critics. Burton produced the sequel to "Alice in Wonderland", titled "Alice Through the Looking Glass" (2016). Burton