Last year, Arrival composer Jóhann Jóhannsson joined Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 to create the score for the upcoming sequel. Now, as the film comes closer to its October release date, two more composers are joining the project to assist him: Benjamin Wallfisch (Hidden Figures, It), and Hans Zimmer (Inception, The Dark Knight).
According to Studio Ciné Live (via Entertainment,ie), Villeneuve says that Jóhannsson isn’t leaving the project, but that the two composers are coming on to help. “It's hard to get to Vangelis' angle. We have Johann's breathtaking atmospheric sounds, but I needed other things, and Hans helped us." Both Zimmer and Wallfisch both coming off of their latest collaboration with Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk.
Jóhannsson has collaborated with Villeneuve on projects such as Sicario and Arrival, and it’ll be interesting to see just what he wasn’t bringing to the project that required the other two to be brought in. In a recent interview with Collider, Villeneuve spoke about the importance of Blade Runner’s original score, and as he’s taken lengths to stay faithful to the original film’s visuals, the he’s done the same with its sequel. “It’s a very specific sound, and it’s very important that the music of [Blade Runner] 2049 be directly inspired by Vangelis’ work.”
We’ll find out just how close he gets when the film hits theaters on October 6th.