Trent Reznor isn’t exactly fond of Bird Box or his experience crafting the score. Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails partner Atticus Ross composed the score for the successful Netflix project. Reznor and Ross have been cranking out scores like a well-oiled machine over the past handful of years, receiving praise for nearly every project they do. Their work on HBO’s The Watchmen easily heightened the series, much like the music they created for The Social Network.
Not every scoring experience can be an easy one. Trent Reznor has been in the music business for over 30 years now and he has the scars to prove it. Working on Netflix’s Bird Box turned to be a learning experience for Reznor and Atticus Ross. Reznor had this to say about working on the movie and what went wrong.
“When we got immersed in it, it felt like some people were phoning it in. And you’re stuck with a film editor who had real bad taste. That’s kind of our barricade to getting stuff in the film. And the final icing on the shit cake was we were on tour when they mixed it. And they mixed the music so low, you couldn’t hear it anyway. So it was like, that was a… That was a f***ing waste of time.”
However, after they saw the finished product, Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor were sure Bird Box would just come and go. “Then we thought, no one’s going to see this f*cking movie,” the musician joked. “And, of course, it’s the hugest movie ever in Netflix.” The movie was huge and started a whole pop culture wave with people even attempting the “Bird Box challenge,” which injured more than a few people.
The Woman in the Window starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman was supposed to be theirs, but they dropped out of the project. “There’s no animosity on our end,” Trent Reznor says. “It’s frustrating when you did that much work and it’s gone. And we were proud – and they were proud – of the movie that it was.” At the very least, Reznor and Atticus Ross have an unreleased record under their belts. The duo have been creating award-winning scores for movies, documentaries, and TV shows, for a decade now, while also continuing to put out new Nine Inch Nails material. It appears that the duo are about to begin work on a new NIN project that will find them collaborating with other artists.
As for the next score, Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor are going to start work on David Fincher’s next movie, Mank, which is set in the 40s. They will be using instruments from the time period when crafting their score, so that should be very interesting to hear when they complete it. You can check out the rest of the interview with Trent Reznor over at Revovler.
