Controversy struck Michael Mann’s new cyberhacker actioner from within this week when composer Harry Gregson-Williams accused the director of “slicing and dicing” his work on the film. So who wants credit for Blackhat’s hacked-up score?
“I would like it to be known for what it’s worth that the ‘score’ for Blackhat maybe credited to me, but contains almost none of my compositions,” 
Gregson-Williams declared Monday on Facebook, four days after the Chris Hemsworth starrer premiered in Los Angeles. It was only during Thursday’s premiere, Gregson-Williams wrote, that he “discovered, to my horror, music that shocked and surprised me…quasi emotional (synth) string pieces that I’d never heard in my life before.
“I knew of at least one other composer, a good one at that(!), that had put in months of work on this movie just as I had, but this appeared to me to be in addition to both our contributions,” he continued. “I can say nothing for certain except that I was not the author of most of what is now in the movie.”
The Social Network’s Atticus Ross also is credited for the Blackhat score alongside his brother and frequent collaborator Leopold Ross. Electronic musician The Haxan Cloak revealed today that he also contributed to the film.
Most pointedly, Gregson-Williams said he’s not alone in having his work rendered unrecognizable by the Heat and Collateral director. “I therefore reluctantly join the long list of composers who have had their scores either sliced and diced mercilessly or ignored completely by Michael Mann,” he wrote.
After sleeping on it for a night, Gregson-Williams appeared to delete the diatribe from Facebook on Tuesday — but not before it caused a mini-storm online, the same day Blackhat screened for critics in New York and L.A.
The composer earned a 2006 Golden Globe nomination for The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and counts the Shrek franchise, Man On Fire, Kingdom Of Heaven, Gone Baby Gone, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Cowboys & Aliens and The Equalizer among his major studio credits.
In Blackhat, Hemsworth’s brilliant computer hacker hunts a dastardly cyberterrorist as Mann shows how precious data can hide around every dark corner of the Internet. Gregson-Williams also might have learned from the Blackhat kerfuffle that in the digital world, nothing is ever truly forgotten. Here’s his full original post:
Reps for the composer and Mann did not respond to requests for comment. Universal releases Blackhat nationwide on Friday.
Jen Yamato
