It won't factor into the Academy Awards but it's still an interesting tiff on the Hollywood music scene: Composer Harry Gregson-Williams has accused director Michael Mann for "slicing and dicing" his work for the film Blackhat, and claiming that he doesn't know where a majority of the film's music comes from (from Billboard)
"I knew of at least one other composer, a good one at that (!), that had put in months of work on this movie, just as I had, but this appeared to me to be in addition to both our contributions," he wrote in a Facebook post. "I can say nothing for certain except that I was not the author of most of what is now in the movie."
The other composer we have to assume he's referring to is Atticus Ross, who won an Oscar with Trent Reznor for his work on The Social Network. He collaborated in part with British ambient electronic musician The Haxan Cloak for Blackhat. Although Ross has plenty of experience in industrial/electronic music and Haxan creates some rather dark soundscapes (very different than Gregson-Williams' typical output), we can't imagine he wouldn't be able to recognize it onscreen. Haxan Cloak isn't credited in the film however, while Ross and his brother Leo Ross are.
We haven't seen the film but we wouldn't complain about obvious Haxan influence...his 2013 album Excavation was a crushing success.
Gregson-Williams has since removed the post from his page, but before he did he hinted that other composers had made similar complaints about working with Mann in the past. No examples were given. Mann has only directed four other movies since 2000, and he hasn't made a habit of working with marquee names for scores.
You can still check out the full text of the composer's complaint at the International Business Times' website.
