Hans Zimmer's iconic music is well known to superhero movie fans, as he's provided the music for The Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel and most recently, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
That last one, however, might have been the final nail in the coffin. In an interview with BBC Hardtalk, Zimmer says he is done composing for superhero movies.
"I did Batman Begins with Chris [Nolan] 12 years ago, so The Dark Knight Trilogy might be three movies to you, to me it was 11 years of my life," Zimmer says."[Batman v Superman] was very hard for me to do, to try to find new language."
One can imagine composing a score for three Batman films and then having to compose an entirely different set of music for a different type of Batman film might be difficult. The entirety of the interview has not yet been released, so perhaps Zimmer will have more to say on the subject.
Even without superhero movies, Zimmer's resume is still impressive. He's done scores for movies like Interstellar, Inception, The Last Samurai and Gladiator, and likely won't be out of work anytime soon. Still, his unique sound has served as a backdrop for DC's most popular superhero movies, so not having the composer moving forward should prove a unique challenge for director Zack Snyder moving into the Justice League film. After all, Zimmer's music has served as the foundation for the entire DC cinematic universe, so it will be interesting to see which composer decides to step into Zimmer's shoes and carry on his work. Even with a new composer behind the wheel, don't expect to stop hearing Zimmer's excellent Man of Steel theme anytime soon.
Other than composing scores for superhero films taking up a chunk of Zimmer's life and finding composing for Batman v Superman difficult, it will be fascinating to see what other reasons Zimmer provides in the interview. Perhaps Batman v Superman's dour critical reception had a role in Zimmer calling it quits? Maybe he simply doesn't get much out of composing music for comic book movies (aside from giant stacks of cash, of course)? We'll have more details soon.
