J.J. Abrams says John Williams will do the 'Star Wars' score
J.J. Abrams won’t say much about the next Star Wars film, which he is directing — though info about casting and the story has piled up in bits and pieces. Now a new bit, from Abrams’ himself: At a Berlin press conference for Star Trek Into Darkness, an entrepreneurial audience member asked the filmmaker about longtime collaborator and composer Michael Giacchino, who has provided the score for most every major Abrams work. The audience member asked: Would Giacchino also do the score for Star Wars? The short answer: No — John Williams, most famous for composing the six other Star Wars films, will, probably. The longer answer: Michael Giacchino is great! But so is John Williams!
Abrams was caught on tape saying this, so it’ll be hard for him to drape it in much mystery, though questions persist: Have they had a formal meeting about working together? Requests to both Abrams and Williams for comment were not immediately returned. Updates to come.
Read Abrams’ full comments about Giacchino and Williams, and watch the press conference, below:
Can you talk a little about Michael Giacchino’s music and will he be scoring Star Wars too, or not?
Michael Giacchino is an incredible composer who I was lucky enough to begin working with on Alias. He was doing videogame soundtracks and we started working together then and have done a number of films and television series since. He is brilliant and it’s very easy for me to say to him, looking at a scene, “Okay, this scene needs to be about the conflict between these characters. It’s got to be hopeful but you also have to feel that there’s a tension still.” I can say all these ridiculous things and he has to listen and say “okay” and go off and come back and present music that invariably does that but so much more. He’s truly one of the most influential members of our crew and I think this score, he just really out did himself, especially with the score for Benedict’s character. I think that suite that he wrote was just brilliant. Again, for Star Wars it is very early days to know but I believe that going forward John Williams will be doing that film, because apparently he was there long before I was.
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