We at Collider have an exclusive first listen for the new score from Oscar-winning composer Steven Price’s work on the upcoming animated film Wonder Park. Price, of course, won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, and his career is full of impressive work across a variety of genres on films like The World’s End, Fury, and the docuseries Our Planet.

Price’s latest effort is in the realm of feature animation on Wonder Park. The film tells the story of an optimistic young girl named June who discovers an incredible amusement park hidden in the woods. It’s in a state of disarray, but is full of fantastical rides and talking animals, and June discovers it was created by her imagination, and she’s the only one who can fix it.

Below, you can listen to a track from Price’s score called “You’ll Hear Me in the Wind”, which is quite sweet and dreamlike, with a dose of whimsy and wonder thrown in for good measure. Indeed, in parts it's almost like the music you’d hear at Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park or something of the sort, which is rightly fitting with the subject matter at hand here.

I’ll have a full interview with Price about his work on Collider soon, but in the meantime you can see a snippet of what he had to say about working on Wonder Park below, after listening to the track.

Wonder Park opens in theaters on March 15th, and the soundtrack will be released on March 8th.

"Wonder Park is really a story about imagination. June and her mom spend countless hours imagining, designing and building models of an amazing park, complete with rides such as Fireworks Falls and the Skyflingers, all powered by the magical Clockwork Swings, the heart of the park.  The park is their game, their shared project taking over their whole house and sometimes the whole neighbourhood, and, as the film progresses, we see June entering this world for real.

 

Musically, the film couldn’t have been a more exciting thing to write for.  I needed to capture the sense of this park, and June herself, full of fun and imagination, and also how the state of the park reflected June’s emotions.  It seemed an opportunity to deliver something really thematic. The principle two themes of the film are the Park theme, where I really wanted to capture something classic, melodic and celebratory, a kind of fanfare for the imagination if you like, and the Mom theme, a more introspective theme that helps us connect with June’s emotions as the story develops.  Also needed were motifs for some of the principal characters in the park itself, the team of animals led by Peanut the Monkey that all work together to save the park from the darkness that envelopes it.  Underpinning all this, and central to the film and its score, is the idea and the sound of the Clockwork Swings.”