This afternoon at New York Comic Con during the Focus Features panel for “Hanna,” the teenage assassin picture starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett, director Joe Wright revealed that electronic duo the Chemical Brothers would composing the original score to the film.
How the seemingly odd collaboration came about is easy. “I’ve known them for a lot of years,” the filmmaker said adding that he met the band in the mid-90s when he was doing “visual projections for raves.” The score isn’t yet complete as the two scenes that were shown to NYCC audiences were unfinished and utilized none of the pair’s new music (more on those scenes later).
While the filmmaker noted that he had mostly worked in a “classical” genre before (“Pride & Prejudice,” ” The Soloist”) and loved working working with Dario Marianelli on “Atonement,” for which the composer won an Academy Award, he also said he was, “very excited to finally… work with a more modern beat. There’s a lot of bass, its very loud.”
Updated: Here’s Wright’s quotes in full.
“The Chemical Brothers are doing the score for the whole film. I’ve been talking to them, and we’re very excited about that. I’ve known them for a number of years. When I first left college I set up a company called Vegetable Vision, which was a lightshow company, and we used to go around doing projections at raves and nightclubs. We met the Chemicals back then, about ‘94, ‘95, and I’ve known them ever since. I was very excited to work with them on the score, as you know, my previous films have sounded very classical, working with Dario Marinelli, he won the Oscar for the ‘Atonement’ score. But I was very excited to do something with a lot of bass. It’s very loud.”
A ‘Bourne” meets “Le Femme Nikita” style thriller, “Hanna” follows a teenage assassin as she journeys across Europe after being sent on a mission by her father (Bana), while eluding enemy agents. Early this year we described the script as a “super taut, on-the-run thriller that not only has adrenaline and a quickened pulse, but a heart and soul as well” (read our script review).
Also part of the cast is Olivia Williams who recently put in strong turns in Lone Scherfig’s “An Education” and Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer.” “Hanna” is set to hit theaters April 8, 2011.
