Having written the tunes for the first film in a real hurry, all I wanted to do was sit down and sort of play with them for myself a little bit. However, it actually felt tighter than the first in its own peculiar way. Where the first film was very collaborative and a great panic, because it was a last-minute rescore, in theory we had a bit more time on this one. Klaus wrote some more tunes and with our tunes wrote the score, and Blake Neely, Geoff Zanelli, and everyone else went at it.
I absolutely promised both Tom Cruise and Ed Zwick that I wasn't going to moonlight on anything else, and when I made the promise, I really, really believed it! But then Gore got into a little bit of trouble and I said to him, 'I can't score this movie, there's no way I can, but my friend Klaus probably can.' Klaus is a wonderful composer, but I couldn't help myself from writing many of the tunes, and then I sort of orchestrated the way those tunes would sound as well, setting the tone. We last talked during The Last Samurai, which gives you the reason why I didn't have the credit on the first one. To understand Dead Man's Chest, I suppose we need to go back over Pirates 1 ground a little bit. Was this experience different than with the previous times you've worked with him? You've worked with director Gore Verbinski many times. Well, let's talk about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest first.
SoundtrackNet had an opportunity to speak with Hans recently at his studio in Santa Monica. This year he has already scored the controversial hit The Da Vinci Code, and the record-breaking smash sequel The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
In the three years since SoundtrackNet last spoke with him, Zimmer has scored over ten films, including Something's Gotta Give, King Arthur, Madagascar, and Batman Begins. Hans Zimmer is one of the most prolific composers working in Hollywood today.