This morning, “The Box” director Richard Kelly took to Twitter in order to answer some of the questions we raised in an article posted yesterday about the status of the not-so-anticipated film’s much-anticipated score, composed by Arcade Fire members Win Butler, Regine Chassagne and Final Fantasy member Owen Pallet.
Kelly described it thus: the Arcade Fire is currently working on a new album and plan to “release the score at some point, when it does not conflict with their album release schedule for their record label.” No doubt sensing that there is a large contingent of people — like us — that would have nothing to do with “The Box” were it not for the prospect of a Bernard Hermann-esque score by the indie rock gods, Kelly added that, for now, he and the band hope fans will spend their money on movie tickets and hear the score in the context of the film. We’re fans of Arcade Fire and all, but we hope someone bootlegs the music a la John Murphy’s belatedly released “Sunshine” score so we don’t have to sit through what looks like another dud from Kelly (sorry guy, bein’ honest).
Kelly ended his Twitter session by noting — as we did two weeks ago — that fans can hear samples of the reported 80-minute score on the film’s official website and that “more information is forthcoming.”
So, while Kelly’s posts confirm what we already suspected, one question remains: why the hold up? At this time, we have yet to hear back from Butler or the band’s label, Merge Records, both of whom we e-mailed. Nonetheless, we have a few ideas of what it could be: 1) some sort of issue between Merge and Warner Brothers about who will release it—though we assume Butler would have it written into his contract that the score must be released on Merge, 2) the band or label are worried about oversaturating the market with Arcade Fire material prior to the release of their forthcoming third LP, 3) Merge — a smaller outfit with limited funds and manpower — doesn’t have the budget to push two Arcade Fire releases in one year or even 18 months, and maybe not even enough to push anymore October releases than they already are — again, the score is almost surely tied to Merge as WB would no doubt have released it by now, 4) Butler and Merge are holding off on finding out just how well the movie is received before slapping their names on it and putting it on store racks, 5) Butler and co. are so proud of the score that they’re planning to release it as a full-fledged album, not unlike Peter Gabriel‘s score for Martin Scorsese‘s “The Last Temptation of Christ” — an album which was originally conceived as a standard score, but morphed into a standalone album when Gabriel went back into the studio after the film’s release and developed the music into 1989’s Grammy-winning instrumental album “Passion.“
We’ll keep you updated on the status of the score’s release, but for now it looks like Arcade Fire fans could find themselves in a dark theater and 12 bucks poorer on November 6 if they want to hear it anytime soon. — Stephen Belden