Kris Bowers: Last News

Carolyn Giardina One of the surprises of the awards season is Gints Zilbalodis’ “Flow” — the dialog-free tale of a solitary cat’s emotional journey as it learns to survive after a great flood — which upended the feature animation race when it won the Golden Globe. Combined with honors such as the Los Angeles Film Critics prize in animation, Latvia’s “Flow” went on to receive a pair of Oscar nods, including best international feature and animated feature — underscoring the message that animation is film, and not just for kids.

Lauren Coates Parenting isn’t easy — whether you’re a top-of-the-line robot or an Oscar-nominated composer. It’s a lesson Lupita Nyong’o’s Roz learns the hard way in “The Wild Robot,” DreamWorks’ three-time Oscar-nominated animated adventure film.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Oscar-nominated artisans Kris Bowers (“The Wild Robot”), Clément Ducol and Camille (“Emilia Perez), Paul Tazewell (“Wicked”) and Judy Becker (“The Brutalist”) are among the recipients being honored at Variety’s Artisans Awards. Variety’s 11th annual Artisans Awards is set to take place on Feb. 8 at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

While most people woke up very early for the Oscar nomination announcements this morning, Chris Sanders watched the feed from Tokyo, Japan. As the last stop on his tour of premiering The Wild Robot, being nominated for Best Animated Feature was a perfect bookend to the trip.

Jon Burlingame The Academy music branch has expanded its Oscar original-score shortlist from 15 to 20 films this year, widening the field of potential nominees in a year of varied approaches and soundscapes. Composer Kris Bowers already has an Oscar, but it’s not for music; it’s for producing the 2023 documentary short subject “The Last Repair Shop.” His best shot yet for music awards is “The Wild Robot,” about a machine that becomes mother to an orphaned gosling on an island without human inhabitants.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Composing legend Hans Zimmer was the top individual winner at the 15th annual Hollywood Music in Media Awards ceremony held Wednesday night, with three wins. The film “Emilia Pérez” also picked up three wins, followed by “The Wild Robot” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” with two apiece.

Hans Zimmer and Emilia Pérez took home three trophies each to lead the winners at the 2024 Hollywood Music in Media awards, which honor the year’s most memorable film and TV music moments. The Wild Robot was the only other multiple winner, taking a pair of prizes during Wednesday night’s ceremony at The Avalon in Hollywood.

The 67thGrammy Awards nominations have recognized musicians Hans Zimmer, Atticus Ross and films such as Twisters and The Color Purple with nods across multiple categories.

The Wild Robot is about an unlikely family of a robot and a goose. The music from the film reflects composer Kris Bowers’ own anxieties about being a new parent: He had a 6-month-old daughter when he began composing the score. A major theme plays midway through the film when the robot, Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), had taught Brightbill to fly and has to watch him fly away to migrate with a flock.

The latest edition of Deadline’s Sound & Screen Film, the event where we shine a spotlight on some of the most intriguing and captivating scores heading into this year’s awards season, is underway Friday night at UCLA’s Royce Hall. We love this event at Deadline because we know how magical it is to see a 60-piece orchestra perform the music behind some of the year’s most exciting movies.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Dreamworks Animation’s latest film “The Wild Robot” impacted composer Kris Bowers in ways he did not expect. Director Chris Sanders called on Bowers to write the music for the animated feature about a robot named Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) marooned on an uninhabited island. “From the beginning, Chris told me he was going to rely heavily on music for this film.

Bridgerton is streaming on Netflix now, but what songs are included in the four new episodes?Created by Chris Van Dusen, the period drama follows the fictional Bridgerton family as they navigate London high society in the early 1800s.After two seasons and a spin-off, the show recently returned for a third season, with the first four episodes going live in May. Now, as of June 13, the remainder of the season has dropped on Netflix, while a fourth season is currently in development.For the third season, Adjoa Andoh, Jonathan Bailey, Nicola Coughlan, Luke Newton, Claudia Jessie, Luke Thompson and Simone Ashley all reprise their roles.

Bridgerton might be synonymous with soapy drama and steamy sex scenes but it’s also known for orchestral covers of classic pop songs.Created by Chris Van Dusen, the Netflix period drama follows the fictional Bridgerton family as they navigate London high society in the early 1800s.After two seasons and a spin-off, the show returned for a third season in May 2024. A fourth season is currently in development.For the third season, Adjoa Andoh, Jonathan Bailey, Nicola Coughlan, Luke Newton, Claudia Jessie, Luke Thompson and Simone Ashley all reprise their roles.

If Vladimir Putin was watching the Academy Awards on Sunday night from his dacha on the Black Sea, his mood may have been blackened by the Best Documentary Feature category. As Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast had predicted, the Oscar went to , Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing film about the early days of Russia’s brutal siege of the Ukrainian port city. 

For the second time in the last three years, the Oscar for Best Documentary Short has been claimed by Ben Proudfoot. The Canadian-born filmmaker and his fellow director Kris Bowers won the Academy Award tonight for their film The Last Repair Shop, the story of craftspeople in Los Angeles who keep 80,000 musical instruments in working order for the city’s public school students. It’s the only big city school system that keeps kids in tune with free bassoons, trombones, sousaphones, cellos, piccolos and every other kind of instrument.

At the age of 84, documentary legend Sheila Nevins today earned the first Oscar nomination of her career.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Composer Kris Bowers calls the score to Ava DuVernay‘s “Origin” “one of the most meaningful” of his career, but there’s one music cue, “Leaves,” which he says “stands out as one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever composed.” Inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, “Origin” follows Wilkerson’s journey in writing the book. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Isabel as the film explores how caste systems have shaped societies.

In a hidden corner of Los Angeles, a small group of people toil in obscurity, tending to broken pegs, stuck valves, clogged tubing and damaged keys – all to restore musical instruments to perfect working order for the city’s public-school students. 

The Color Purple often succeeds as a thoughtful fusion of two other adaptations of Alice Walker’s landmark novel that still confidently hums its own tune.In shakier moments, though, confidence gives way to nostalgia, when the film hammers home its reinterpretations of quotable scenes and dialogue from the Quincy Jones-produced, Steven Spielberg-directed 1985 adaptation with an insistence that borders on flashing “Hey, remember this?” in bold type onscreen.Creating and saying something new with such proven material, while also purposely coaxing audience sentiment for a beloved original, surely posed a formidable challenge for Bazawule and company. And having Jones, Spielberg, and Oprah Winfrey — the big guns and big breakout from the 1985 film — onboard as producers must have eased and complicated the gig in unfathomable ways.Oprah and Jones also had a hand in the original Broadway musical adaptation, which has spun off its own lore and legacy, and adds another meta layer of pop-lit gloss to what this film aims to freshly reinterpret.The stage musical — with a book by Marsha Norman, and lyrics and music by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray — has amassed its own roster of breakout stars, including American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, who made her 2007 Broadway debut stepping into the lead role of Celie, and Orange Is the New Black‘s Danielle Brooks, Tony-nominated for playing Sofia opposite Cynthia Erivo in the 2015 Broadway revival.Barrino and Brooks reprise their respective roles here with a lived-in grace and fortitude that does freshly illuminate Walker’s moving narrative, the lifeblood that courses through every iteration.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the shortlists in 10 categories for the upcoming 96th Oscars ceremony. Overall, Greta Gerwig’s meta-comedy “Barbie” had the most mentions with five including sound, original song for its three submissions from Billie Eilish (“What I Was Made For?”), Dua Lipa (“Dance the Night”) and Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt (“I’m Just Ken”), and original score, from the latter duo. The big miss for “Barbie” was in makeup and hairstyling, which was the category that yielded the most surprises.