Danny Elfman Describes His Process of Scoring ‘Justice League’

Danny Elfman being brought onto Justice League earlier this year took plenty of fans by surprise, and it sounds like the composer had the same reaction.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Elfman chronicled the experience of scoring the DC Extended Universe film. After director Zack Snyder had to step down from finishing Justice League due to a family tragedy, Joss Whedon was enlisted to finish the film’s reshoots. He brought Elfman on as the film’s composer back in June, replacing fan favorite Junkie XL.

“I got the call from Joss very last second,” Elfman revealed. “I got the call and it was, ‘You have to decide now and then go to work tomorrow.’”

According to Elfman, much of his process occurred while Justice League was in reshoots. Because of this, he didn’t score over any of Snyder’s unused footage, requiring the early cuts of the film to get creative.

“I had a lot of storyboards in place of action.” Elfman explained. “There would be full scenes and then a five-minute sequence of storyboards. Honestly, it was like working on an animated film. I didn’t score any of the unused footage, the movie that came out is the movie I scored, it was just in very rough form.”

But according to Elfman, the process of scoring Justice League was still a bit smoother than his previous collaboration with Whedon, Avengers: Age of Ultron.

“I’ve only worked with him twice and it’s been under those circumstances,” Elfman added. “With Avengers, it was trickier because I was working around half a score. So, I had to rescore either half or two-thirds of the film, and that made for a squirrelly process. On Justice League, it was a blank slate. I only had to work around a Leonard Cohen song.”

The response to Elfman’s Justice League score has been a bit all over the map. While fans have taken a liking to the composer’s ‘Hero’s Theme’, others have criticized his integration of his previous scores (including those from Marvel films) into the pieces. You can listen to the full soundtrack for yourself here.

Justice League is in theaters now.