Despite the legions of naysayers predicting that Captain Marvel would be a flop, it’s gone on to be yet another billion-dollar success for Disney and Marvel Studios. A great deal of the film’s marketing focused on it being the first female-fronted superhero effort in the MCU, and to bolster these feminist credentials, the studio seemed determined to make sure as much of the behind the scenes talent as possible were women. One key factor in this was the June 2018 announcement that Captain Marvel would be the first MCU film released with a score by a female composer, Pinar Toprak.
Now, as far as the world is concerned, Toprak did score Captain Marvel. She’s listed as the composer on Wikipedia, on IMDb and is even set to receive an ASCAP Screen Music Award for her work on the movie. But, according to Screen Geek, the actual composer for the film was Michael Giacchino.
Before we dive into this, we should note that as early March 2019, Toprak was talking up her involvement in the movie, saying:
“I made my intentions clear, and when the opportunity to demo came, I wanted to make sure that I made the best impression. I went and hired a 70-piece orchestra and did a big production of it so that they could see me in front of the orchestra conducting, and I did another video inside my studio where I talked about the character and the theme. I really wanted to put my best foot forward, and I’m very grateful it worked out.”
But Screen Geek claims that things didn’t work out. Their sources say that Marvel Studios made the decision to bring in Giacchino due to them being unsatisfied with Toprak’s score. This was after the studio had sent her several notes on what they were after, but it seems that her composition simply wasn’t to their taste.
Bringing in Giacchino at this late stage (and convincing him to do it apparently without being officially credited) is a very strange state of affairs. In fact, this is such an odd story overall that I’m going to take it with a pinch of salt. I mean, surely you can’t just get one of the biggest composers in cinema to ghostwrite for somebody else without it getting out? Plus, the deception is all very strange.
That said, a commentator has said the following in response to skepticism that they could keep this under wraps:
This was known in the film music community already. Surprised it got out though.
Honestly, at this stage, it’s hard to say what to believe, but if Screen Geek has it right, then it seems there might’ve been a fair amount of behind the scenes drama on Captain Marvel.
