It’s all change for the Black Widow movie (opens in new tab). Lorne Balfe – who scored Mission: Impossible Fallout (opens in new tab) and Bad Boys For Life (opens in new tab) among others – will step in to take over from Alexandre Desplat as composer. This comes after the MCU movie, the first of Marvel Phase 4 (opens in new tab), was indefinitely delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (opens in new tab).
Film Music Reporter (opens in new tab) confirms that Balfe has “recently been scoring” Black Widow.
Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel (opens in new tab), The Shape of Water (opens in new tab)) had been brought in as the original composer, but is now out. He also suffered a similar fate with Star Wars: Rogue One (opens in new tab) and was replaced as reshoots began.
Balfe’s body of work, though, points to him being a good fit for the more action-oriented Black Widow. He co-wrote the music for Modern Warfare 2 (which, as luck would have it, has just recently been remastered (opens in new tab)) with Hans Zimmer, and has also been instrumental – pun absolutely intended – in collaborating with Zimmer on Inception (opens in new tab), The Dark Knight (opens in new tab), and Dunkirk (opens in new tab). He even wrote some music for The Bee Movie. Truly a man for all seasons.
Black Widow herself, Scarlett Johansson, has recently spoken about the movie in the latest issue of Total Film (opens in new tab), teasing a measure of unpredictability to proceedings: “I think part of Kevin Feige’s genius is that he always thinks about what fans expect out of these films and then gives them something that they never could’ve dreamed of.”
In what could be music to the ears of many, another unpredictable shift – that of the composer – could help bring out the best in Black Widow. Now, we play the waiting game for a rescheduled release date.
Keep track of 2020’s biggest films with our movie release dates (opens in new tab) calendar