There are few pieces of movie music as instantly recognizable as John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme.” More than two decades after it first accompanied audiences into the Wizarding World, Williams’ music remains inseparable from Harry Potter, which makes following in his footsteps a fairly intimidating assignment — even when the person doing it happens to be Hans Zimmer.
Speaking exclusively with Collider, Zimmer revealed that his approach to HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series is to stay “as far away as possible” from Williams’ work and find something original. Zimmer and Bleeding Fingers Music composers Kara Talve and Anže Rozman are creating the music for the HBO adaptation, which premieres at Christmas. But fortunately for Zimmer, he’s already got experience when it comes to following in the giant footsteps that Williams leaves for us all, as he already had the unenviable task of finding a new score for a new Superman in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel:
“Let me tell you a story, a quick story. When I was doing Man of Steel, which, of course, is Superman, for three months I was running around going, ‘I don’t know. I can’t do this. I can’t do this because it’s John Williams. John Williams is — it’s brilliant! It’s brilliant!’ And Zack Snyder and Chris — Chris Nolan actually was the producer — and Chris said to Zack, ‘Have you heard anything from Hans yet?’ He said, ‘No,’ and he says, ‘You’re not going to hear anything unless you go down there.’ And Zack phoned me and said, ‘Can I come down?’ I go, ‘I don’t really have anything,’ and he goes, ‘Well, I’ll be there on Tuesday.’ So I came up with a tune, but I still was incredibly worried about it.”
Zimmer went on to reveal that Snyder gave him some of the best advice he’d received from a filmmaker, that also happened to be some of the simplest advice as well. “Zack just said the simplest thing to me. He said, ‘Hans, it was just a movie. This is just a movie.’ And that was so liberating. It’s just a movie, and my life is all about making music for movies, which I do because I love it,” Zimmer told Collider. “I love the movies, and I love having fun with it. I can’t write like John Williams, but even if I could, I would try to stay away as far as possible and try to be original. So, does that sort of answer your question?” When Collider suggested that the answer was essentially to stay away from Williams because “nobody can get near him,” Zimmer immediately agreed: “Right, exactly. I mean, he is truly real.”
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Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
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🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
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01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
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02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
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03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
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04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
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05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
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06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
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07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
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08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
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The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
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The Rings of Power · Prime Video · Since 2022
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
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One Piece · Manga since 1997 · Netflix 2023
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
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The Witcher · Netflix · Since 2019
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
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Percy Jackson · Disney+ · Since 2023
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
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Hans Zimmer Is Taking His Music Back on Tour
Before audiences hear what Zimmer has created for Harry Potter, the two-time Oscar winner is taking decades of his most famous work back on the road. Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level begins its newly announced North American leg on February 17, 2027, in Hartford, Connecticut, with Zimmer performing alongside a 19-piece ensemble. The production combines new arrangements with electronic soundscapes, lighting, and an entirely redesigned stage experience; the existing tour has already played 50 sold-out European shows for around 600,000 fans.
Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level begins its North American run on February 17, 2027. Tickets go on general sale September 25 at 10 a.m. local time. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
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