10 Weird Secrets Behind Tim Burton Movies

2. The Corpse Bride Origins

When the production of The Nightmare Before Christmas came to a sad end, storyboard supervisor Joe Ranft approached Burton with a macabre little yarn that he knew he would eat right up.

Titled “The Finger,” this creepy tale came from Shivhei ha-Ari, a 17th century text that embeds a number of Jewish folk stories. Set in Russia, The Finger is about a groom who pops his wedding ring onto the finger of a corpse while reciting his vows. Oops.

Abruptly, the corpse leaps up and proclaims “My husband!”. Sound familiar?

The groom then takes his new breathless bride to a local rabbi who annuls their marriage... as death has already parted them. The bride then collapses into a heap of bones with a piercing wail never to be seen again. Job done.

Burton was drawn to the tale in an instant and began developing a big-screen adaptation of it. However, the story itself had to undergo some big scale changes. Burton’s screenwriters devised a more family- friendly finale.

They also shifted the setting from Russia to a fictional place modelled after Victorian England. Also, any references to Judaism were omitted as they wanted to make the story more universal to his viewers, and after only a short 52 weeks... The Corpse Bride was born.