Onward is one of Pixar's best original movies, but being released right when theaters across the globe started closing their doors as a result of the pandemic saw it fall by the wayside. Like many of you, we're hoping Tom Holland and Chris Pratt will be given the opportunity to return to this fantasy world, and asked composers Mychael and Jeff Dana for their thoughts during a recent chat.
We were speaking to them to mark the DVD and Blu-ray release of The Addams Family 2, but had to take this opportunity to look back on Onward and hear their own hopes for a follow-up.
Something you might not know is that Mychael composed Hulk's original soundtrack before the studio stepped in and enlisted Danny Elfman to deliver a more traditional superhero score than what Ang Lee originally envisaged. Despite that disappointing experience, we were curious to find out whether the comic book genre interests and excites them given their prolific history as composers.
Here's the excerpt from our interview (you can read the full conversation by clicking here).
Talking of animated films, Onward is one of my favourite Pixar movies and you guys did such an incredible job giving that a unique sound. How do you look back on that experience, and are you hoping there might be a chance to return to that world?
Mychael: We would love it. It’s definitely a highlight for both of us in our long careers here. Working with Pixar is working with the very best. The standards are super high and it inspires you. The story was incredible and really emotional for us, so I think we would love it they were to do a sequel for that. Unfortunately, it was released - I believe the day was March 6 - of that fateful year of 2020 and theaters were all shut by March 11. I think I remember those dates correctly, so it got released at a really terrible, confusing time, and it got lost in the shuffle a little bit. People have discovered it over the last couple of years since then, and yeah, I think a lot of people really love that movie and we’d love to see those characters come back.
Jeff: Definitely.
Mychael, I know you worked on the original Hulk score once upon a time, and you’ve both since had such a varied career from Lakeview Terrace to Life of Pi to The Addams Family, but would scoring a modern superhero movie interest you both?
Jeff: Absolutely. We like the world of fantasy and anything that’s heightened or surreal because it opens up a whole new world for music. We like to push the boundaries if we can and be interesting with our selections of strange instruments to mix with an orchestra, for example, so anything that’s a fantasy world we love to explore. Maybe we’ll get to do one. We’d love it.
The Addams Family 2 is now available on Digital and will arrive on Blu-ray and DVD January 18.