X-Men: Dark Phoenix is Being Scored By Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer will be returning to the superhero world by agreeing to compose the score for X-Men: Dark Phoenix. The fourth installment in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men prequel series comes from Simon Kinberg – who’s written every X-Men film since X-Men: The Last Stand – in his directorial debut, with James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult reprising their X-Men: First Class roles as Professor X, Mystique, and Beast, respectively.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix takes place almost a decade after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse (in keeping with the prequel series’ tradition) and follows the team as they deal with Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) losing control of her abilities during a solar flare incident and turning into the Phoenix. Jessica Chastain’s unnamed antagonist plays a part in manipulating the Phoenix against the X-Men as well. The film takes obvious inspiration from Chris Claremont’s iconic 1980 comic book story arc, The Dark Phoenix Saga. The saga was previously adapted in The Last Stand, but Kinberg has frequently expressed interest in adapting the story again in order to get it right. It’s an ambitious project and one that requires one of the best composers in the industry to heighten emotional value.

Evan Peters, who plays Quicksilver in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, confirmed to MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast at Sundance Film Festival 2018 that Hans Zimmer is indeed scoring the X-Men film.

“…I think the film is gonna be incredible. Hans Zimmer’s scoring it—I don’t know if I was supposed to say that or not. Simon has surrounded himself with incredible people, and Simon knows this world better than anybody, so it was just cool to see him—he’s so happy and in his element in that world, and also being able to direct and guide everybody in this way. I was very happy for him and I think it’s gonna be great.”

Zimmer is, of course, primarily known for scoring films such as The Lion King, Gladiator, Inception, and The Dark Knight trilogy, among others, but he gave up composing the scores for superhero films after Zack Snyder’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, which he co-composed with Junkie XL. After that film released, Zimmer stated that he was done composing superhero movies due to feeling uninspired with the genre, which is why he chose not to return for Justice League alongside Junkie XL (who was eventually replaced with Danny Elfman during the film’s post-production).

But, in early 2017, Zimmer appeared open to scoring another superhero movie should “somebody come along with a great idea.” And it seems Kinberg’s idea for X-Men: Dark Phoenix inspired Zimmer enough to return to the fold at least one more time. It’s also worth noting that this will mark Zimmer’s first time scoring a Marvel-based movie solo, though he did serve as an executive music producer on Jon Favreau’s Iron Man and scored The Amazing Spider-Man 2 alongside The Magnificent Six.