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Was There A Fallout Between Christopher Nolan And Hans Zimmer? Tenet Score Fiasco Explained
Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer’s collaboration traces back to 2005 when they first collaborated on the DC film Batman Begins.
From actors to cinematographers, filmmaker Christopher Nolan has a knack for having frequent collaborators, and one of his favorite until a few years back was composer Hans Zimmer. After a long-term collaboration between the two, Zimmer chose the Oscar-winning epic sci-fi Dune over Nolan’s Tenet.
While Nolan is one of the most acclaimed Hollywood filmmakers in modern cinema who is well known for creating visually stunning movies, Zimmer’s composition of powerful and memorable scores is well known for elevating the best of the best movies creating a unique immersive experience. Then, what could be the reason behind the fallout of such an incredible collaboration?
Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer’s collaboration created masterpieces once upon a time
Nolan and Zimmer’s collaboration traces back to 2005 when they first collaborated on the DC film Batman Begins. The background score for the film served as what Zimmer referred to as “only the beginning of a theme” for the upcoming collaborations. The score only went on to become more experimental and aggressive in the sequels The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Following this, their collaboration was extended to the 2014 Oscar-winning film Interstellar. Zimmer earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score and left a lasting impression on viewers with its distinctive "BRAAAM" cue which had a long-lasting influence on the musical aspect of blockbuster marketing. Regarding making the score for the movie, Zimmer spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about how Nolan wrote the screenplay throughout in company of his composition. “I really just wrote about what it meant to be a father. And he (Nolan) starts describing this huge journey, this vast canvas of space and philosophy and science and all these things. So he was writing with this piece of music sort of keeping him company all the way through the writing process, all the way through the shoot,” he said.
For the next collaboration, Zimmer composed music for the 2017 epic historical war thriller film Dunkirk. With the use of the Shepard tone, it is touted to be his most creative and ambitious effort to date. Zimmer told Deadline, “Nobody had done what we ultimately did, and I kept thinking, halfway through the movie, ‘I know why nobody has done it before — because it’s sort of impossible.’”
When, why, and how did the fallout between Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer happen?
After decade and a half long collaboration, Zimmer and Nolan seemed to part ways in 2019 ahead of the films Tenet and Dune. To the fans’ surprise, the two announced at the time that Zimmer had passed on Nolan’s Tenet for Denis Villeneuve's Dune. “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," said Zimmer. He continued, “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."
Later, Zimmer won his much-awaited and deserved Oscar for his bold and sensational music in Dune. While neither of them ever addressed any drift between them, Zimmer once said in The Playlist’s podcast The Fourth Wall, “I have to do it, and Chris understands I have to do it, and he’s gonna be just fine.” On the other hand, since there is no visible bad blood between the two, fans await another incredible collaboration between Nolan and Zimmer in the future.
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