Danny Elfman To Score Sam Raimi's 'Oz' And 'The Hunger Games'

Danny Elfman had a fairly high-profile falling-out with his Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 director Sam Raimi while trying to score Spider-Man 2 — a falling out that prompted the composer to declare that the two would never work together again.

Well, something happened, because now, in addition to scoring Tim Burton's Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, Mr. Elfman says he will be doing the score for Oz: The Great and Powerful, and likely scoring The Hunger Games, as well.

In a very long interview with Buzzine, the composer says,

It's a two-Tim Burton year, and a Sam Raimi, so there's three. I'm not going to say no to Tim and Sam — that's already three movies. And then Men in Black, well of course I don't want somebody else to do number 3, so there was another one. And then another one called The Hunger Games popped up, which seemed like really interesting thing. Different — and different catches my attention in a way that's like, "Oh, I can't ever pass up a chance to do something different." So that deal's not even closed, it may not even happen, but we're well along with that.

He follows that up with,

Oh, Frankenweenie, of course, is in there, as well as Dark Shadows. I'm already having to start to write pre-production music for Frankenweenie and for Oz because of stuff that they'll sing to, the theme... So it's going to be an interesting period, after which I hope to take a big chunk of time off and write a bunch of concert music that I have in my head.

Some of the latter quotes suggest that, while Oz: The Great and Powerful may not be a musical, exactly, it will possibly feature some songs in the same way that The Wizard of Oz did.

Badass Digest reprints quotes Devin Faraci got while with CHUD, where Danny Elfman said,

It's the first time I've ever walked from a director in twenty years, and hopefully the last time. He became intolerable. I've been on some heavy duty films, so to say that it had to be pretty bad. I have been in war zones you wouldn't believe in 55 films. But this is the first time I've said, I've had it. It's just not worth it. I would rather go back to waiting tables than to do Spider-Man 2 again.

So that was a pretty big break between the two, and we don't know what happened to fix it. But the idea that the 'old' Sam Raimi might be back is somewhat encouraging. [via The Playlist]