Danny Elfman has a long history of scoring comic book movies. He made his name with the thumping theme to Tim Burton’s Batman, and went on to work on Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Hulk, and Justice League.
However, his contributions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been fairly minimal so far – he co-composed the Avengers: Age of Ultron score with Brian Tyler, and hints of his Spider-Man arrangements were featured in No Way Home.
This May, he’s finally tackling a full movie solo, thanks to Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Elfman is no stranger to the Evil Dead director, who he’s previously collaborated with on Darkman, the Spidey movies, and Oz the Great and Powerful.
Things seem to be proceeding well behind-the-scenes, as proven by this post on Twitter showing the recording process:
Elfman has also confirmed he’s not completely ditching Michael Giacchino’s work from the first movie, either. In early 2021 he explained his plans:
“We’ll definitely refer to his original theme, and I’ll no doubt be coming up with new motifs for new situations and characters. I’m not going to ignore it. I don’t believe in that. There’s this weird thought process in Hollywood every time you do something new that you’ve got to let the original musical themes go and start fresh. I think that doesn’t serve an audience well. So I like doing variations on a theme that I know for a character that an audience already associates with them. I think that’s important. When I did Avengers: Age of Ultron, I was very careful to find places to play around with Alan Silvestri’s theme. And I enjoyed it.”
With the first trailer arriving as the post-credits scene of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we have a decent idea of what to expect come May. Here’s hoping we get a couple more in the interim – we still haven’t been properly introduced to Xochitl Gomez’ America Chavez yet, and despite some teases, the true villain of the story remains a mystery.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness arrives on May 6, 2022.
