John Williams Is Already Recording The 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Score
The release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi is almost exactly 10 months away, and we haven't seen a single frame from the film yet. Word on the street is that we won't see the first footage until Star Wars Celebration in April, but there have been rumblings of a teaser trailer maybe being attached to Beauty and the Beast in March. We'll find out soon enough.
Meanwhile, we do have some new details from behind the scenes of the anticipated Star Wars sequel. It seems franchise composer John Williams is already hard at work on the score, which is surprising, since that's not usually how the post-production process works. Find out more about the Star Wars The Last Jedi score development after the jump.
Filmmaker Robert Meyer Burnett posted this to Twitter:
LAST JEDI scoring update. Last Thursday was John Williams' 85th Birthday. He's conducting. Rian Johnson wants to use the score for editing.
— Robert Meyer Burnett, Viceroy of Verisimilitude (@BurnettRM) February 12, 2017
Usually the editing of a film is done with a temporary soundtrack in place in order to get a feel for the pacing and to provide some inspiration to the composer as to what the director is looking for musically. But in this case, Rian Johnson wants Williams to compose music that he can use in order to inspire the editing process. This gives Williams a little more freedom in his work, and it just might result in a more dynamic score.
Williams was already said to be working on music for Star Wars: The Last Jedi back in December, but many assumed that his work at the time was composing music for the first teaser trailer. Every composer does work on the score before a cut of the film has been assembled, but not to the point that the director is using their music to edit the film. The score is usually one of the final pieces added to a movie, so having John Williams conducting music so far in advance is quite out of the ordinary, especially for Star Wars.
Will we hear some of John Williams' new music whenever the first footage from Star Wars: The Last Jedi debuts? That remains to be seen, but if he's already hard at work on the music, it would stand to reason that we'll hear at least some of it sooner than later. If all goes well, the first footage will arrive sometime in the next couple months, so stay tuned for all the latest updates right here.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi hits theaters this winter on December 15.