Set in orbit above a planet on the brink of war, The Cloverfield Paradox  follows the story of a team of scientists as they make a last-ditch effort to solve the Earth's energy crisis.  In a desperate attempt to harness the power of a particle accelerator, the crew unleashes a chaotic and deadly force they cannot explain.

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"...Bear McCreary's music, which is reminiscent of Elliot Goldenthal's majestically bummed out score for Alien 3... adds about $10 million to the film's budget by daring to sound big."

-RogerEbert.com

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"Propelled by a stunning Hitchcockian score from Bear McCreary, this is a film that subverts your expectations before the opening credits have finished."

-DigitalSpy.com

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Release date: February 5, 2018

In conjunction with Lakeshore Records, Sparks & Shadows brings you Bear McCreary's indie-epic score to Colossal, a movie about Gloria (Anne Hathaway) as an out-of-work party girl who finds herself in relationship trouble, and moves back to her tiny hometown to get her life back on track. Meanwhile, a larger-than-life creature begins attacking Seoul, South Korea on a nightly basis, captivating spectators around the world. One night, Gloria is horrified to discover that her every move at a local playground is being mimicked on a catastrophic scale by the rampaging beast. 

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“I chose to focus the music entirely on Gloria,” explained McCreary. “We witness the fantastic events through her eyes, so I generally chose to score her reaction to the events, rather than the events themselves.”

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McCreary took an unusual approach to working on the film – he started at the end.  “It was vitally important that the score deliver an epic, soaring finale, without overpowering or destroying the tone of the film. The last 12 minutes of the film was the first thing I wrote.  Once the final reel was approved by the director and studio it was an easier process to reverse engineer the rest of the score.”

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Release date: May 12, 2017

Usually writing music for narrative feature films, Bear McCreary had to take a different approach to compose for a documentary.  The documentary, directed by Jennifer Brea, chronicles her ordeal suffering from ME, more commonly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  "I learned a lot working with Jennifer Brea on Unrest," said McCreary.  "This is literally her life.  So, approaching it as I would a scripted film proved to be pointless."  Unrest is, at its core, a love story.  How Jen and her husband forge their relationship while dealing with her mysterious illness is at once heartbreaking, inspiring and funny.

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One of the inspirations McCreary took from seeing Brea’s journey was the sound of the MRI machine (“I got to write for and orchestrate the sounds of an MRI machine! That was a first!”).

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“They say that your composer is the film's first audience,” said Brea in the film’s blog. “In working with Bear, not only did we deepen the emotional journey of Unrest for viewers, as the director it was an opportunity to experience the film from a fresh perspective and add an entirely new layer of meaning.” 

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“I rewired my thinking so that I was scoring her life, and thought of the film as a byproduct,” McCreary explained.  “The film tackles complex social and medical issues, and yet I was inspired by Jennifer’s distinctly personal narrative voice. I strove to support her story with subtle themes, warm string textures, and evocative melodies.”

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Release date: September 22, 2017

Composer Bear McCreary channels the percussive sounds of the typewriter in his score to Rebel in the Rye, a biopic which explores the world of legendary author J.D. Salinger.  Writer/director Danny Strong brings vividly to life a revealing look at the experiences that shaped one of the most renowned, controversial, and enigmatic authors of our time.

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Rebel in the Rye may very well be a score that McCreary was destined to write.  The son of a novelist, the sound of a typewriter has been a companion since he was a child. "The percussive cadence of typewriter tapping has rattled around my brain since I was born,"  McCreary explained.  Scoring Rebel in the Rye gave McCreary the chance to channel those sounds into a rich orchestral tapestry.

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Inspired by the images of Salinger typing away at his greatest masterpiece, McCreary opted to use two grand pianos to represent its sound. "The close-up shots of typewriter hammers striking paper reminded me of hammers striking piano strings," stated McCreary. "The way Salinger sits at the typewriter, blasting off furious finger movements, reminded me of how I sit at the piano when I play."  A different kind of keyboard— an actual typewriter— makes an appearance as a percussive instrument and can be heard on the tracks "Early Writing" and "Typewriter Drums."

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Rebel in the Rye afforded McCreary the opportunity to write perhaps his most personal score to date. "I am proud to have been a part of Danny Strong's unique vision of J.D. Salinger's literary gifts, and to have scored a film of such poignant beauty,"  McCreary concluded.

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Release date: September 8, 2017

"Something is amiss from the very start, with Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) packing her bags and heading down the Louisiana highway to somewhere, anywhere, in a fantastic wordless opening set to Bear McCreary’s rolling, glorious score.”    

– USA Today

Composer Bear McCreary’s score for 10 Cloverfield Lane is a masterful assemblage of elements including a 90-piece orchestra, a 45-piece string ensemble, a grouping of 30 celli and 8 bass, and a string quartet. These traditional instruments are combined with two unusual feature instruments, the Yayli tanbur and the Blaster Beam, an experimental instrument built and played by Craig Huxley.

“Bear has written an incredible score for [director] Dan Trachtenberg’s 10 Cloverfield Lane,” said producer J.J. Abrams.  “It is tense, emotional music that gives the film scope and heart, augments the surprise and horror. It’s an homage to Herrmann, but wholly original at the same time. I'm deeply grateful to Bear for his contribution to this movie.”

Release date: March 11, 2016

This soundtrack features composer Bear McCreary’s original score for The Forest, a supernatural thriller set in the legendary Aokigahara Forest, a real life Suicide Forest, where Sara (Natalie Dormer) journeys in search of her twin sister, who has mysteriously disappeared. Despite everyone’s warnings to stay on the path, Sara enters the forest to discover her sister’s fate.

The soundtrack was inspired by and meant to set a tone that evokes the classic horror and thriller films of the 1970’s. The story draws heavily from Japanese folklore, and McCreary’s score reflects this through the use of traditional Japanese instrumentation and a Japanese children’s choir.  “I encouraged the children to sing softer and softer, slower and slower," said McCreary. "Their schoolyard songs took on other-worldly qualities. Their gentle little breathy voices were genuinely frail and creepy, more effective than I could have ever dreamed. I used their songs throughout the film, as a cornerstone of the score.”

Release date: January 8, 2016

Premiering on Halloween 2010, in 120 countries simultaneously, The Walking Dead became a cultural zeitgeist practically overnight. A deserted car wreck. A policeman walking through it.  The back of a little girl.  He calls to her. At first she doesn’t respond. Then she turns around… revealing that all is not quite what it seems.  The cop– left with no choice– shoots her, and as she falls, the tremolo string arpeggios of the “Main Title Theme” by McCreary crescendo, drawing millions of viewers into this harrowing world of The Walking Dead.

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“When we started discussing the first season we agreed that drama, action, and horror would be felt more intimately if the score were used only in pivotal scenes, and that it should be written with tonal clarity,” McCreary explained of his initial approach to scoring The Walking Dead.

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As the series progressed, McCreary was able to expand the musical palette.  For the second and third seasons he did so with “acoustic guitars and drums to connect with the farmhouse setting (check out ‘Message to Morgan’).” He blended these with a small orchestra for the gut-crushing mid-season finale (‘Sophia'). As audiences were introduced to new characters like the Governor, McCreary incorporated a synth pulse to his largely organic instrumentation. When Negan was introduced a few seasons later, he employed “creepy electric guitar gestures.”

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For this long-awaited release, McCreary selected his personal favorites from the first seven seasons, along with those most frequently requested by fans.   McCreary noted that “narrowing down the highlights from seven years of work was a tremendous challenge.”

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Release date: October 20, 2017

Outlander  follows the story of Claire Randall, a married combat nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously swept back in time to 1743, where she is immediately thrown into an unknown and dangerous world.

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“The epic third season of Outlander  spans decades, centuries and continents," remarks composer Bear McCreary.  "Season 3 transports us from the blood-soaked Culloden moor, to twentieth-century Boston, across the Atlantic to the sandy beaches of the Caribbean, before finally crashing onto the shores of the New World."

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"The creative team behind the series encouraged me to push the boundaries of the score far beyond the language I developed in the first two seasons," McCreary continues.  "I cannot imagine any project other than Outlander  that would allow me to set a soaring bagpipe melody over blistering congas!  As I wrote, I savored every scene, every story arc, and every new location where the story took me.  The tracks on this album reflect the season's varied storytelling, including Afro-Cuban textures, a musical homage to the crushing loss of Culloden, adventure on the high seas, and the reunion of long-separated lovers."

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Release date: February 9, 2018

The soundtrack for Black Sails, a Starz original series about the Golden Age of Piracy, features gritty original music by Bear McCreary.  "My goal was to create music that sounds improvised by an exhausted crew aboard a ship navigating choppy waters,” said McCreary. “I wanted the audience to sense dirt beneath fingernails plucking jangly mandolin strings, to feel urgent strains of a hurdy gurdy crank, and to smell stale air wheezing out of old accordion bellows."

The resulting score, described as raw, salty and authentic, also features what Entertainment Weekly called "Arguably McCreary’s best title theme, and that’s saying quite a bit."   

Release date: January 28, 2014

“Everly is a film in which Salma Hayek must stay alive in an apartment while confronting wave after wave of increasingly volatile and vicious Yakuza gangsters. It is pretty much as awesome as it sounds,” described BadassDigest. MovieFone described it as “a symphony of exploding heads and bullets.”

To score this ‘symphony,’ Director Joe Lynch turned to frequent collaborator Bear McCreary. Lynch said, “Bear and Team McCreary (including his lovely muse Raya and badass brother Brendan, who worked on the holiday tracks) were the sonic glue that holds the madness together, and I don’t know what the film would be like without his work on it.” 

Release date: January 20, 2015

Set in the war-ravaged African countryside, Revolt follows the story of an American soldier (Lee Pace) and a French foreign aid worker (Bérénice Marlohe) as they team up to survive an alien onslaught. As they journey through the battlefield in search of refuge, their bond is tested when the soldier discovers his true identity.

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“From day one, Bear and I agreed that our original scifi movie needed a signature sound.  A score that would balance a sinister alien presence with the power of our will to fight back,” said writer/director Joe Miale.  “Bear gives our story a distinct voice, one that can waver, whimper or scream. A single solo instrument sails with uncertainty over a relentless rhythm— man against machine. Cue after cue, Bear weaves the story’s dynamics into the music itself; a cherished collaboration that still leaves me wonderstruck."

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"When I saw the staggeringly scary robotic drones stampede towards Lee Pace in Joe Miale's visceral sci-fi film REVOLT, I knew the score needed to be mechanical, pulsing and sonically distinct from anything I'd ever done,” said McCreary.  To achieve the perfect backdrop he “assembled an ‘orchestra’ of floppy disc drives, and worked with brilliant sound designer Jonathan Snipes, to get them to create sustained notes I could use in the score. Their chirping, guttural voices permeate the music, giving these killer robots a sense of devious human expression."

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Release date: October 13, 2017

"In the darkest hours of a cold winter night, I read a script chronicling adventurous LARPers, an evil curse, a disgruntled heavy metal singer, wizards, warriors and the Hell Lord Abominog,” said composer Bear McCreary.  “My musical imagination filled with soaring bagpipes, drop-tuned distorted guitars, double kick drums, blaring horns, dulcimers and ethereal vocals—everything I love about music in one epic score! Now, the film is a reality and the heavy metal / fantasy soundtrack album is finally unleashed!"

The Knights of Badassdom soundtrack features performances by heavy metal and rock luminaries including Brendon Small (Dethklok), Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake, Dio), Mike Keneally (Frank Zappa), Steve Bartek (Oingo Boingo), Ira Ingber (Bob Dylan), Pete Griffin (Three Inches of Blood) and Joe Travers (Zappa Plays Zappa).

Release date: February 11, 2014

James Rolfe (aka “The Nerd”) brings his popular web series to life with Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie!  Rolfe turned to Bear McCreary for the music. 

“The music combines a full symphonic orchestra, heavy metal rhythm section and custom sampled synthesis from NES, Super Nintendo and SEGA Genesis hardware,” McCreary described  “For this score, I got to live out all my musical fantasies, combining influences from my favorite video games and film composers that inspired me when I was a kid. I can honestly say that the score for Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie is without doubt the most fun score I’ve ever produced,” said McCreary.  “I also got to incorporate the iconic ‘Angry Video Game Nerd Theme Song,’ and collaborate with its composer, Kyle Justin.”

The Soundtrack also features two songs from the band Young Beautiful in a Hurry, “Nerds Before Birds” and “Barcade,” written by the band’s Brendan McCreary, who regularly collaborates with Bear on the TV series Defiance and other projects.

Release date: September 2, 2014

Composer Bear McCreary’s score for the third and final season of Da Vinci’s Demons strikes a compelling balance between modern and ancient instrumentation. Blending Renaissance tones of the viola da gamba, lutes, and Celtic harp with a contemporary orchestral style, subtly layered modern synth sounds, and heavy percussion, McCreary’s score weaves the essential themes of the series into an immensely satisfying musical finale.

Release date: November 3, 2015

The Defiance Soundtrack Deluxe Edition features two CDs, one containing 22 tracks of original score, songs and cover songs as heard in the first season of Defiance, and the other 22 tracks of original score from the companion MMO game.

The musical world of Defiance is as diverse as the cultures it represents. For the first time on CD, this Deluxe Edition brings it together in one place.

Release date: November 29, 2013