"Chris and I do work really well together," Zimmer told
BBC News in a recent interview.
"He is my guardian angel when it comes to my music. He protects it tremendously and makes sure it gets heard."
"When you start the next project you have to forget everything you did before, otherwise Dark Knight will start to sound like Kung Fu Panda," he added.
"I just throw myself into one thing and become a monk. I sit in my room and get grumpy and don't answer the phone. It's the only way I know how to do it."
Next up for Zimmer is Guy Ritchie's
Sherlock Holmes sequel - set to be released later this year - but that doesn't mean he's not already preparing for
The Dark Knight Rises. Most interesting were his comments about where he's looking for inspiration in advance of writing the score.
"I’ve been listening to a lot of Verdi lately. And Alison Goldfrapp, and a lot of electronica as I’m heading into ‘Dark Knight’ territory again. I've been in the studio trying out ideas. I'm embarrassingly far advanced. I sent Chris some stuff the other day and he thought it was really unusual that I wasn't holding the whole thing up."
"Of course I'll try to make it different, but I'm not going to abandon the musical language of the previous film. It's a matter of knocking down some walls and making it broader, wider and more epic."
Pretty interesting, eh?
With an all star cast which includes Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Garly Oldman as Jim Gordon, Tom Hardy as Bane, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate,
The Dark Knight Rises is set to be released on July 20, 2012!