James Newton Howard is an Academy-Award nominated film composer. He is best known for the production of films such as Green Lantern, Micheal Clayton, King Kong, Treasure Planet, The Last Airbender, The Sixth Sense, Snow White, the Huntsman, The Bourne Legacy, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Howard co-composed the music for the first two installments of Cristopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy with Hans Zimmer, another famous composer.
He is the film composer for The Hunger Games. He also composed soundtracks for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Part 2, and later returned to compose the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Since his work on the original The Hunger Games films, Howard has scored films such as those in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them series and the Disney film Raya and the Last Dragon.
Trivia[]
- He replaced Danny Elfman for two films, The Green Hornet and The Hunger Games.
- He and Hans Zimmer were awarded a Saturn Award and a Grammy Award for The Dark Knight.
- He dropped out of The Dark Knight Rises to do The Hunger Games.
- His trademark is that he never conducts his own music.
- He wrote original music for Batman Begins' trailer.
- He is known to work on a short schedule. The scores for King Kong and The Hunger Games were composed in one month.
- He is often called to score film when a previous composer drops out. He is also known to add to music that has already been written. Danny Elfman with The Green Hornet and The Hunger Games, and Alan Silvestri with Treasure Planet.
- James Newton Howard composed 3 Disney films in a row. Dinosaur, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet.
- He has composed every film directed by M. Night Shyamlan.
- He has been nominated for many Academy Awards for Best Original Score. He was nominated for The Prince of Tides, The Fugitive, The Village, Micheal Clayton, and Defiance. He was nominated for 2 Oscars for Best Original Song. He has yet to win an award.
- He and Hans Zimmer won a Grammy and a Saturn Award for their work on The Dark Knight.
- His favorite score pieces of music through his career have been The Launch from Treasure Planet, Horn of Plenty from The Hunger Games, Harvey Two Face from The Dark Knight, Central Park from King Kong, and As Water Flows from The Last Airbender.
External links[]
James Newton Howard at the Internet Movie Database
James Newton Howard on Wikipedia