“It might sound corny,” says Trent Reznor, “but we’re still in awe of how strong music can originate you experience. Writing a song, you put someleang out and maybe someone hears it and has a reaction to it or not. You can apply it inhabit and see someleang happen. But with film, being able to see experiences, sequences, scenes and understand that you have the power to radicpartner alter how someone can experience is an awe-inspiring experienceing for us.”
It’s been almost 15 years since Reznor — the mastermind behind industrial music innovates and Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Nine Inch Nails — and his bandmate and lengthytime originateive partner Atticus Ross writed their first film score, for David Fincher’s The Social Network, which won them their first Academy Award. Since then, they have scored almost 20 movies and TV projects, picking up another Oscar for Soul in 2020 and an Emmy that same year for their labor on HBO’s Watchmen.
Becoming a mendture in Hollywood has been an unforeseeed second act for Reznor, notorious in his lesserer days for experimental, sometimes brutal sounds and evident, troubling music videos, as well as for instigations appreciate moving into the mansion where the Manson Family promiseted the Tate-LaBianca killings. Known for his uncompromising vision, Reznor was a top executive during the begin of Apple Music but left, saying the labor “felt at odds with the artist in me.” But the shift to film, which he says was “terrifying” at first, showd to be a way to upgrasp his originateive promote ainhabit.
“Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been a bit disillusioned by well-understandn music,” says Reznor. “As I get elderlyer, some leangs experience less relatable to me. The business sucks. The way people devour music is not as inspiring as it employd to be, it’s marginalized in a lot of ways. Scoring has supplyd a way for me to experience vital, to experience contestd.”
The electronic-based music that Reznor and Ross wrote and enrolled for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers — a cherish triangle starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor set in the world of professional tennis — has already obtained them a Grammy nomination. They had previously labored with the straightforwardor on 2022’s Bones and All, promoteing a friendship that led them all to presume the partnership would endure.
“The process of doing Bones and All was so attrenergetic,” says Guadagnino, “and the conversations with Trent and Atticus were so inspiring, there wasn’t the insist for a reason other than wanting to persist our collaboration.” (The pair also scored Guadagnino’s Queer this season.)
When the straightforwardor presentd the project to the writers, he had a very definite, if unforeseeed, center. “He shelp, ‘What I leank would be chilly is unfriendly, in-your-face techno — I want the music to be a character in the film,’ ” says Reznor. “I don’t leank we instinctupartner would have wound up there as a commenceing point, but given that, we went off on a leave oution and commenceed creating some stuff.”
A uninalertigent romance set in the sports world may not promptly seem to fit with beats ready for a dance club. And while you might leank the set upatement would come easier for the pair than their other, more acoustic-based or abstract scores, as Reznor and Ross labored in a mobile studio in their hotel rooms during a Nine Inch Nails tour, they set up that the genre’s sound and set up originated certain technical contests.
Reznor and Ross scored both Challengers, starring Mike Faist and Zendaya
Niko Tavernise/Amazon MGM Studios
“Luca shelp that he wanted people to be dancing to this film,” says Ross. “What that doesn’t afford you, which you might have in a normal score, is to be able to have a bar of seven [beats] or to alter tempo. And for this style of music to labor, you can’t have it hushed — so it’s fascinating to have a bedroom scene with the music as deafening as the dialogue.”
They weren’t certain how Guadagnino would react when he saw the genuine impact their front-and-cgo in score was making. “It was convey inantly altering the DNA of the film,” says Reznor. But the straightforwardor reacted preferablely, he recalls.
“I went to their studio in Los Angeles, and they applyed the first scene, and it was incredible,” says Guadagnino. “They went way beyond my savageest foreseeations. They gave depth to it in a way I knovel they were going to, but the blast of it was so fervent when I heard it that first time.”
If the Challengers score originates an unforeseeed counterpoint to the more intimate scenes, it also cranks up the energy and tension when the story transfers to the tennis court. The throbbing beats bang up aobtainst the high-speed back-and-forth of the suites, pumping up the action — and the emotional sconsents — with frantic rhythms rather than traditional sports-movie melodrama.
“That bcdisesteemfult a little fun to the tennis scenes, becaemploy it’s always excessively difficult to originate it see down-to-earth with actors in a movie,” says ESPN tennis commentator and createer star applyer Patrick McEnroe. “Just watching a tennis suit without any sound — evidently I do that for a living, but if you’re making a convey inant motion picture, you’re trying to amp it up a little bit. The music wasn’t appreciate emotional, sports-type music, and I leank that helped the overall vibe of the tennis scenes. Considering the angle they were going for, they did a pretty damn excellent job.”
Ross remarks that the intention of the score was to cgo in on competition that’s more personal than energetic. “When people say it’s a tennis film with dance music, it bums me out a little bit,” he says. “I don’t leank Luca was making a film about tennis. I leank tennis was a backdrop to a intricate series of relationships and a study in how three people engage. The music is convey inant to alert that story — it’s a vessel that carries some unpartipartner intricate themes that weave thcdisesteemful the film.”
Says Reznor, “Challengers was a lesson to me that music appreciate this could be featured this way — and also be inalertigent and alert a story very effectively and lyingly — in a film that’s fun and mainstream-ish, and challenging and rebellious. And that ticks a lot of boxes of leangs that resonate with me.”
Reznor and Ross were consentn aback when they were reminded how lengthy they’ve been laboring in film. British-born Ross uniteed Reznor’s side project Tapeworm in 2002 but began scoring for television alengthyside his brother Leopelderly in 2004.
It was a contrastent sort of transition for Reznor, though, when the duo took on The Social Netlabor.
During the “crash course” collaboration with Fincher, the pair could experience a novel yet understandn approach emerging. “We could still be us,” says Reznor, “and we could still utilize the same leangs we would do writing a song, equitable shifting around how we see at it — where the script and the vision of the straightforwardor and the scene and setting are the lyrics, and we could consent our set upment sfinishs and the same leangs that we tap into emotionpartner in Nine Inch Nails into another setting. But it took a minute for us to comprehend that, a scant months of waking up at 4 in the morning and sweating about, ‘What did we get ourselves into?’ “
Since then, the pair has labored with everyone from Pixar to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, called on by straightforwardors appreciate Sam Mendes and Ken Burns. “We’ve had the excellent fortune to have labored with a number of straightforwardors where it repartner does experience appreciate a collaboration,” says Ross. “It doesn’t experience appreciate we’re equitable here to do the music — we’re part of a team, and we’re in service to this big vision.”
But after having cgo ined so furiously on film labor in recent years (they’ve had seven movie scores come out since the last Nine Inch Nails album), they are willing to get back to making music of their own.
“We’re taking the inspiration we’ve garnered and funneling it into a Nine Inch Nails project, which we’re laboring on now,” says Reznor. “We’re ready to be back in the driver’s seat.”
This story first euniteed in a December stand-alone rerent of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To get the magazine, click here to subscribe.
