King Kong recording sessions now finished

Variety has an interesting story up now on the story behind Peter Jackson’s last-minute decision to replace composer Howard Shore with James Newton Howard on his remake of King Kong:

Howard, a six-time Oscar nominee whose scores include “The Sixth Sense” and “The Village,” replaced Howard Shore as composer on the film. Shore — whose cameo as the pit-band conductor during Kong’s New York theater appearance survives the cut — won three Oscars for his music for “Kong” director Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” movies.

The last-minute change stunned the film-music community because of Shore’s close collaboration with Jackson over nearly four years of work on the trilogy. Jackson’s only public comment came in an Oct. 14 statement: “During the last few weeks, Howard and I came to realize that we had differing creative aspirations. … Rather than waste time arguing with a friend and trying to unify our points of view, we decided amicably to let another composer score the film.”

Sources say Shore recorded his unfinished “Kong” score for nine days (three in Berlin, six in Wellington with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra). Shore and Howard declined interview requests, but sources say — although Shore had been working on themes for months in advance — post-production was running so late that he could not spend sufficient time with the edited film.

Unlike most film composers, Shore orchestrates and conducts his music. He averaged eight minutes of recording per day on the “Kong” score, none of which will be used. He has told friends that Jackson’s press statement is essentially correct, that the decision to stop was not a Universal mandate (as had been widely speculated after the mid-October revelation that the film’s running time had ballooned to three hours and that the studio was negotiating with Jackson about how to cover the extra $32 million required to finish the movie).

Among other interesting and amusing details, the article also reveals that James Newton Howard composed the main themes for the film in just three days. Wow. Here’s hoping it all works!