User blog:Mr. Joshamee Gibbs/Geoff Zanelli Returns to the Caribbean

Ahoy mateys !

According to Film Music Reporter, Geoff Zanelli would come back to score Pirates 5. This is, as a huge soundtrack fan, an excellent new. You may know him as an "additionnal cues" composer who worked on every POTC film, and you may think it's not that big of a new. But the truth is: he was a lot more than that.

He composed some of the most iconic cues from the trilogy, including Barbossa is Hungry (originally called Broadside), Sword Crossed (originally called Moonlight Serenade), Lift Off (the parachute scene in AWE), Tia Dalma/Calyspo's theme (included in many tracks from DMC and AWE) and... Guess what ? Believe it or not, He's a Pirate. Of course he didn't invent the main theme, but he's the one who took Hans Zimmer's and Klaus Badelt's themes and arranged them together in that awesome and famous track. So, even if for a long time, people were arguing about the composer being Zimmer or Badelt, it was him (as he revealed on his website).

Now you may have noticed I didn't mentioned On Stranger Tides. The reason is, according to me, and to many other soundtrack fans, Mr. Zanelli didn't "composed additionnal cues" for that movie. He co-composed it with Zimmer. If you go look on his website (where you can also find every tracks he did for every POTC films) on the OST section, it's obvious that having composed 9 major cues for the movie, he should have had more credits. His work includes On Stranger Tides - the opening scene - (he composed the epic Spanish Theme!), The Mermaid Attack, Palm Tree Escape and the new version of He's a Pirate. These are, for me, part of the best cues from the score. But still, all he got was "additional cues composer".

So after movies like On Stranger Tides, Rango and The Lone Ranger (he's actually the one who did the awesome Finale) where he composed as much, or even more, than Zimmer, many people were rooting for him to take the helm of composing for the Pirates franchise, especially after Hans Zimmer have admited he wasn't sure he'd come back after what he went through on OST. Obviously, Mr. Zanelli loved the idea, and I remember having read that Zimmer did too (there's an insider on hans-zimmer.com who speaks with HZ himself).

So, yeah, basically, this is a really great new.

I don't see why a site like Film Music Reporter would lie about that, and Zanelli isn't really known. But don't forget it doesn't specify if Zimmer comes back too, so we really can't know for sure.

I take it that many of you didn't know (or didn't care :P) about all this, so share your thoughts (would you want HZ, GZ or another composer on P5?) if you have some and/or be sure to check Geoff Zanelli's website here : http://www.geoffzanelli.com/projects/pirates-of-the-caribbean-on-stranger-tides/

(Credits goes to Sean B. for the find (I saw on KTTC, but I'm unable to create an account in there)).