How "Dune" Ended a 12-Year Collaboration: Why Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan Parted Ways
36#dune #hanszimmer #christophernolan
Filmmaking is a collaborative art form. Whilst the director controls the overall vision of the project, they work with other creatives in order to achieve their vision, from the set design, cinematography, the acting, and the movie’s score. Because of this many directors build up relationships with other creatives across their many projects. In particular we see directors frequently collaborate with composers to craft the movie's score.
Steven Spielberg often collaborates with John Williams. Tim Burton with Danny Elfman. Sergio Leone with Ennio Morricone. Whilst directors don’t always work with the same composers each time, you can clearly see that directors will frequently try to work with someone they are familiar with. This can’t always work out because of scheduling conflicts and other projects that take up too much time for the composer. Whilst a director may produce one film every two to three years, some will take much longer. But the composing of a film score will not take as long as crafting the entirety of a film from pre production to the cinematic release.
So when a composer works with multiple directors as frequent collaborators, they will sometimes be forced to make a choice about which project to take on. This is what happened with director Christopher Nolan and composer Hans Zimmer. These two had collaborated on 6 films together over a 12 year period. Their first film together was Batman Begins in 2005, then the further collaborations of The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar and ending with Dunkirk in 2017. Hans Zimmer was even nominated for the Academy Award for best achievement in music written for a motion picture for Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk.
As I mentioned though, composers are able to work with multiple directors each year and Hans Zimmer has also become a collaborator of director Denis Villenuve on the film Blade Runner 2049. Both Nolan’s final film with Zimmer and Villenuve’s first film with Zimmer were released in 2017, and at the rate the two directors made movies, their future projects were likely going to clash. Christopher Nolan worked on his next project Tenet which had a 2020 release date, and Denis Villneuve was set to craft a new adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel Dune. And it was because of Villenuve’s work on Dune, that ended the 12 year collaboration between Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer.
Many people at the time when it was announced that Zimmer would choose to work on Dune over Christopher Nolan’s next movie, many had assumed the two had a falling out. However, this doesn’t appear to be the case whatsoever, it is just down to scheduling conflicts and Zimmers eagerness to play in the sandbox of the Dune universe.
Hans Zimmer has stated that he is a lifelong fan of the Dune novels having read the books as a teenager. Zimmer stated that
“I read the book when I was a teenager, and Denis read the book when he was a teenager, and we talked a lot about that, “One of the things that happened to both of us is rather than coming at this movie with the wisdom of years and the knowledge of having made lots of movies and all the baggage that you bring, it transported us back to being 13-year-old, reckless boys who weren’t afraid to try things, who weren’t afraid to hold on to a shot, who weren’t afraid to use provocative sounds and colors and who weren’t afraid to do things differently. That’s the great strength of this film."
Zimmer had also been so invested in the world of Dune that even after working on the first movie in 2020, he continued working on music for Part Two before the film went into production, and even started planning work on Dune Part 3, which will be titled Dune Messiah and adapt the second novel by Frank Herbert, only two days into the production of Dune Part 2.
Hans Zimmer even went on to win an Academy Award for his work on Dune Part One. Zimmer clearly had so much passion about working on Dune and still does. Even after the controversy of being snubbed at the 97th Academy Awards for his score for Dune Part 2, he appears to be keen to return to work on Dune Messiah and hopefully get further recognition from the academy. Despite the snub from the Academy Awards, Zimmer was able to win the Grammy for his work on Dune Part Two.
Zimmer was disqualified from the 97th Academy Awards because his score for Dune Part Two used more than 20% of the original score from Dune Part One. This has obviously caused a great deal of disappointment for movie fans, but I believe it is clear that Hans Zimmer’s score for the movie is excellent and will remain so without the recognition of the Academy.