Despite having already scored one iconic Batman movie, Christopher Nolan‘s "The Dark Knight" trilogy, Hans Zimmer is evidently going to score another: Zack Snyder‘s "Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice." OK, given that Zimmer already composed the music for "Man Of Steel," it was probably obvious the composer would return to the Warner Bros./DC Comics franchise again. But Zimmer actually was quite torn about coming back.
“You know something? I have agonized over it,” he told Comic Book Resources in a recent interview about his decision to go forward and score the film. “I agonized over it, so much so that finally, I went, I don’t want to betray what Chris [Nolan], James Newton Howard and I did.”
So Zimmer found an alternative solution: adding a collaborator to take on the Batman parts of the movie.
"And so I asked Zack [Snyder] if it would be okay if I called a friend in. And I’m going to be working with Junkie XL, who really is a great friend. I said to him, ‘You take care of Batman. I’ll do the other guy.’ And Zack loved that idea. It’s a way out.,” Zimmer explained.
Well, at the very least it’s certainly an interesting experiment. Junkie XL (née Tom Holkenborg) is no stranger to film composing or working with Zimmer who he’s actually teamed up with several times. The electronic musician turned movie musician scored "300: Rise Of An Empire," (a movie that Snyder co-wrote and produced), he’s writing the score for “Mad Max: Fury Road” and in the past has worked with Zimmer as a musician on the scores to "Man of Steel," "The Dark Knight Rises" two of the animated “Madagascar” films and “Divergent,” among others (Junkie XL scored the latter, Zimmer was the executive music producer).
So problem solved, and Zimmer doesn’t have to “betray” Nolan’s Batman series (incidentally Nolan isn’t involved in ‘Dawn Of Justice’ beyond a token executive producer credit). And that’s fine, but let’s just hope Zimmer’s work here isn’t as disjointed as it was for "The Amazing Spider-Man 2."
For that movie, Zimmer worked with and enlisted a super group of musicians including Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr, and each of them divided the scoring duties for different characters, themes, etc. But that interesting idea backfired and only made for a more incoherent movie. For WB’s sake, considering they are using ‘Dawn Of Justice’ as a lynchpin for a whole new series of movies that everything rests upon, let’s hope it works.