James Horner left behind a full score for a new movie which hasn't shot yet!
James Horner was one of the most prolific composers working in movies, with his hand in everything from Battle Beyond the Stars to Avatar, via Aliens, Willow, An American Tail and lots more besides. For many, his sounds are part of their cinematic memory and we were sadly robbed of future work with his sad passing in June at the age of 61.
But it turns out we're going to be hearing his scores for longer than we thought. In addition to finishing work on upcoming Southpaw and The 33, the composer had one last gift to share with the world.
Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua was on NPR recently talking about his new boxing movie with host Audie Cornish. And after a chat about the new film he was asked about James Horner, who Southpaw is dedicated to. And his response is pretty amazing, starting with how gentle and thoughtful Horner was and then saying that the composer worked on the relatively low-budget Southpaw entirely for free because he was so interested in the project.
Then: "And I just found out a couple days ago his team flew out here to Baton Rouge, and they brought me all the music from "Magnificent Seven" - he had already wrote it for me based on the script... he did it all off the script because he wanted to surprise me. And I thought it was a gift or something. And they all came out here and they said, Antoine, James wrote the music for "Magnificent Seven" already, and it's just glorious. And that's my memory of James."
That's a pretty incredible thing - not only that Horner managed to leave this entire score for Fuqua but also that he did it without seeing a single frame of the film, which only recently began shooting in Louisiana for a 2017 release. It's a testament to his talent and prolific work rate. And for fans it also means something else - we're going to get to hear one last score from the late master years after he was taken away far too soon.