Though he has one of the more enviable careers that a composer could ever hope for, 2015 wasn't a particularly strong year for Hans Zimmer. The biggest film on his docket was the execrable Chappie, and his other features, including Woman in Gold and Freeheld, went virtually unwatched; he also scored an animated take on The Little Prince, which will be hitting U.S. theaters in early 2016. This is a far cry from his booming work on some of Hollywood's biggest productions of the last decade or so, including 12 Years a Slave, Man of Steel, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. His most notable work, however, has been in collaboration with Christopher Nolan, on Interstellar, Inception, and the Dark Knight Trilogy specifically, and he's now looking to continue this partnership by scoring Nolan's recently announced Dunkirk.
For those unfamiliar, Dunkirk focuses on the evacuation of Dunkirk at the beginning of World War II, in which 300,000 Allied troops rescued the titular French city from the grip of the Germans. The film has yet to cast its major leads, as Nolan is looking to have essential unknowns for those parts, but Tom Hardy, Kenneth Brannagh, and Mark Rylance are all in talks to join the picture. In terms of Nolan's style, however, Zimmer's scores are as important to the overall world-building that the director has been mastering for years now as are his actors, with obvious exceptions like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, and Matt Damon in Interstellar.
Zimmer's docket is pretty full for 2016 as is. He's already slated to provide music for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Kung Fu Panda 3, and will also be scoring Inferno, the latest Dan Brown adaptation to hit the multiplex, and A Cure for Wellness, Gore Verbinski's mysterious new project, slated to bow later this year. Dunkirk, however, is Zimmer's first project that is scheduled to be released in 2017, and one could rightfully expect thunderous work from the composer to match Nolan's typically astonishing technical vision.
