His music has graced more franchises than almost any other composer. Marvel (four Spider-Man movies, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Thor: Love and Thunder, Werewolf by Night), Pixar (The Incredibles, Coco), Disney (Ratatouille, Up, for which he won an Oscar, Inside Out, both Zootopia films), two Planet of the Apes films, the Jurassic World trilogy, two Batman films, three Star Trek films, and so much more and here Michael Giacchino discusses that near unmatchable career in film, one that brought him to the Star Wars galaxy in 2016 with Rogue One.
TBP: I’ve interviewed composers before who don’t seem that excited about scoring a Marvel thing or a Star Wars thing.
MG: I think a lot of these guys and girls come out of music school. They’re not necessarily coming out of film scoring school, they’re coming out of music school, and their priority is music. That’s all they care about, and that’s what they live and breathe, and that’s great.
I live and breathe movies. Music is a part of that, but I live and breathe all the other things. I love storyboard artists. I love production designers. Editors are the most important part of the whole process, making sure that the movie’s singing the way it needs to sing. It’s just a different angle. My angle is definitely from the movie angle and the nerd angle. I do feel like I’m an anomaly in a lot of ways when it comes to someone who’s doing the job that I’m doing.
Everything, basically, that I’ve worked on in my adult life is something I loved as a kid. I had Spider-Man comics. I had Werewolf by Night comics. I had Star Trek action figures, and I had the Star Wars stuff. I had Superman and Batman action figures. I have tons of sketchbooks filled with pictures of Planet of the Apes that I drew. I’ve never quite left that world, and that’s where I like to live.