Ain't It Cool News has broken a particularly cool bit of news this evening, namely that none other than Danny Elfman will be scoring the impending remake of Universal classic The Wolf Man, starring Benicio Del Toro.Elfman is of course, one of the old war horses of movie scores, having plied his trade for nigh onto a quarter century. However, if I may throw a small monkey wrench into th geekworks here, he is not really known as a composer of "heavy" material. His work tends have a sort of quirky, oddball, whimsical feel to it, evidenced in flicks like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetle Juice. And really, the only straight-ahead horror movies he's ever scored have been Red Dragon, Sleepy Hollow and Nightbreed.
Nevertheless, his work can occasionally have a grim, foreboding feel to it, most famously in his iconic Batman theme. Hopefully, we get more of that and less of his trademark "la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la" stuff.
My personal choice would've been veteran Polish composer Wojciech Kilar, who knocked it out of the park in 1992 with the score for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Although he's been around since the '50s, Kilar made his name among American audiences with that stellar score. Surprisingly, the only horror score he's done since has been Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (1999). His epic creepiness and Central European flavor would've been dead-on. But Elfman's no slouch, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. What say you people?