Hugh Jackman’s final Wolverine movie is going out with a bang in every way possible. For the actor’s last hurrah as the adamantium-clawed mutant, Film Music Reporter has word that director James Mangold has enlisted the incomparable Cliff Martinez to compose the score, which is very exciting news indeed. Best known for his collaborations with Steven Soderbergh on films like Traffic and Contagion, Martinez is also responsible for the pulse-pounding soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and, if I may say so, his crowning achievement: the score for Soderbergh’s Cinemax series The Knick.

Martinez will now make his superhero movie debut with Wolverine 3, marking a change of pace from Marco Beltrami—another impressive film composer—who handled music duties for Mangold and Jackman’s The Wolverine.


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Image via 20th Century Fox

Little is known about the plot of this untitled Wolverine 3, but set photos and the involvement of Patrick Stewart suggest we could be heading into Old Man Logan territory, and we do know that the film takes place sometime in the future. Martinez is an exciting pick by Mangold, and I’m mighty curious to see how his aural talents fit into the world of Wolverine with Jackman’s final go around. At the very least, it should stand in stark contrast to the more traditional scores of John Ottman’s X-Men: Apocalypse or Henry Jackman’s X-Men: First Class.

The untitled Wolverine picture also stars Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, and Richard E. Grant and opens in theaters on March 3, 2017. Martinez's other upcoming films include Todd Phillips' dark comedy War Dogs and the Jackie Chan picture The Foreigner, as well as the just-released Refn film The Neon Demon. Take a listen to some of the composer's best work in the videos below.


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Image via Hugh Jackman