Junkie XL Back In Composer’s Chair With MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Grammy nominated producer and composer Junkie XL provides the score for Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures’ post-apocalyptic action-thriller MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, starring Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult.

Directed by Oscar winner George Miller, the mastermind behind the legendary “Mad Max” franchise, FURY ROAD is a return to the world of Road Warrior, Max Rockatansky (Hardy). Haunted by his turbulent past, Max teams up with a mysterious woman, Furiosa (Theron), to try and survive a high-octane Road War.

The film opens in theaters worldwide May 15, 2015, and will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2015. The “Mad Max: Fury Road” original motion picture soundtrack will be available on WaterTower Music on May 12, 2015, and is now available for preorder on Amazon and iTunes.

For the franchise’s first installment in 30 years, director George Miller took the madness to a new extreme. Junkie XL explains, “When you’re watching the film, you’re in a world that has gone completely mad. Everything we know about society is out of the window. It’s so out of this world crazy that it felt like the sum of the previous three movies. To capture this, the music couldn’t be a standard action score. It needed to be incredibly over the top to fit the imagery, almost as if it were a modern rock opera.”

The movie’s vast landscape provided ample opportunity for the composer to explore a diverse range of musical territory, from beating drums to sweeping strings and electric guitar-driven operatic themes, utilizing nearly 200 instruments. “The score includes almost everything in a composer’s arsenal. The instrumentation ranges from big, brutal percussion and an 80-voice choir, with string sections and musical sound design, and everything in between. I used anything I could get my hands on.”

For the film’s lighter moments, Junkie XL studied the classic film scores of Hollywood’s Golden Age, particularly those of Bernard Herman. “In the moments you leave the super mad world and get back to the humanity of the characters, the music gets stripped down. For these scenes, I incorporate woodwinds and use the string section as the driving force. I wanted to channel the great film scores of the ‘40s and ‘50s and studied the era. Those scores had a complex classical quality to them that I wanted to capture,” explains Junkie XL.

Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg) has built a reputation on musical experimentation. The Grammy-nominated multi-platinum selling producer and composer’s versatility puts him on the cutting edge of contemporary music, as well as at the vanguard of film composition.  Junkie is able to draw on his extensive knowledge of classical forms and structures while maintaining a connection with popular music.

POINT BREAK

His recent film credits include DIVERGENT, 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, and RUN ALL NIGHT. Read our interview here.

Junkie XL’s upcoming projects include BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (trailer) and Warner Bros. POINT BREAK, inspired by the classic 1991 hit film of the same name, releasing December 25, 2015.

He is teaming with Oscar winning composer Hans Zimmer for BATMAN V SUPERMAN, providing the music for Batman with Zimmer composing the score for Superman in the film.

Junkie XL has collaborated with Zimmer on several projects including The Amazing Spiderman 2, Man of Steel, Shark Tale, and one of the highest-grossing films of all-time, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. He is also currently creating new themes for EA Sports’ prestigious NFL video game franchise Madden ’16.

George Miller directed MAD MAX: FURY ROAD from a screenplay he wrote with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris.  Miller also produced the film, along with longtime producing partner, Doug Mitchell, and P.J. Voeten. Iain Smith, Graham Burke and Bruce Berman serve as executive producers.  The film stars Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Nathan Jones, Josh Helman, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton.

The behind-the-scenes creative team included Oscar-winning director of photography John Seale (“The English Patient”), production designer Colin Gibson (“Babe”), editor Margaret Sixel (“Happy Feet”), Oscar-winning costume designer Jenny Beavan (“A Room with a View”), second unit director/supervising stunt coordinator Guy Norris (“Australia”), and makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt (“Knowing”).

Warner Bros. Pictures will release MAD MAX: FURY ROAD on May 15, 2015.

The film has been rated R for intense sequences of violence throughout and for disturbing images.

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