WaterTower Music has announced the digital release of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Phillips’ film Joker, which centers around the director/co-writer/producer’s original vision of the infamous villain, indelibly portrayed by three-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix. The film, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and won the Golden Lion (Best Film) Award, is now playing in theaters.
The Joker soundtrack album features an original score by Emmy Award-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (Chernobyl, Sicario: Day of the Soldado), whose composition features the cello as the centerpiece of the score, leading string-based melodies played by a symphony orchestra of 90 musicians. WaterTower Music will release the picture disc and colored vinyl editions of the soundtrack on December 13th.
To interpret the many themes explored throughout the film, director Todd Phillips very early on turned to the composer. “Hildur was writing music as far back as pre-production. I was sending her script pages and she was writing music before we even shot, and what she did for the film is so unique,” says Phillips.
Guðnadóttir remarks, “Todd asked me to write some music based on my feelings from reading the script, which I was inspired to do because it truly resonated with me.” She sent him a sample and recalls, “The film is a gritty character study, which to me translated to melodies that are very simple and monotonic, because that’s kind of the way Joaquin’s character Arthur is seeing things. Then I tried to expand within that simplicity the orchestration around Joker’s evolution not with chords or any complicated music, but with texture that I felt resonated with the melancholia of this character.”
The Joker soundtrack is now available digitally. Vinyl configurations include purple vinyl, multicolored splatter vinyl and a picture disc. These versions will be available December 13 and are now available for preorder. The track list is as follows:
Track List:
- Hoyt’s Office
- Defeated Clown
- Following Sophie
- Penny in the Hospital
- Young Penny
- Meeting Bruce Wayne
- Hiding in the Fridge
- A Bad Comedian
- Arthur Comes to Sophie
- Looking For Answers
- Penny Taken to the Hospital
- Subway
- Bathroom Dance
- Learning How to Act Normal
- Confession
- Escape from the Train
- Call Me Joker
About Hildur Guðnadóttir:
Emmy Award-winning Hildur Guðnadóttir is an Icelandic composer, cello player, and singer who has been manifesting herself at the forefront of experimental pop and contemporary music. In her solo works, she draws out a broad spectrum of sounds from her instrumentation, ranging from intimate simplicity to huge soundscapes. Her work for film and television includes Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Mary Magdalene, and the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl, for which she won a Primetime Emmy in the Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series, Movie or Special category, and a World Soundtrack Awards: TV Composer of the Year nomination.
In addition, her body of work includes score for films such as Tom of Finland, Journey’s End and 20 episodes of the Icelandic TV series Trapped (streaming on Amazon Prime). Guðnadóttir began playing cello as a child, entered the Reykjavík Music Academy and then moved on to musical studies/composition and new media at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and Universität der Künste Berlin.
Hildur has released four critically acclaimed solo albums: Mount A (2006), Without Sinking (2009), Leyfðu Ljósinu (2012) and Saman (2014). Her records have been nominated a number of times for the Icelandic Music Awards. Hildur’s albums are all released on Touch.
About Joker:
Directed, co-written and produced by Todd Phillips, Joker is an origin story infused with, but distinctly outside, the character’s more traditional mythologies. Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck, who is portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. Longing for any light to shine on him, he tries his hand as a stand-up comic, but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty and, ultimately, betrayal, Arthur makes one bad decision after another that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty, allegorical character study.
Phoenix stars in the titular role alongside Oscar winner Robert De Niro (“Raging Bull,” “The Godfather: Part II”), Zazie Beetz (TV’s “Atlanta,” “Deadpool 2”) and Frances Conroy. Phillips directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with Oscar-nominated writer Scott Silver (“The Fighter”), based on characters from DC. The film was produced by Phillips and Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper (“A Star Is Born,” “American Sniper”) under their Joint Effort banner, and Oscar nominee Emma Tillinger Koskoff (“The Wolf of Wall Street”). It was executive produced by Michael E. Uslan, Walter Hamada, Aaron L. Gilbert, Joseph Garner, Richard Baratta, and Bruce Berman. Behind the scenes, Phillips was joined by director of photography Lawrence Sher (“Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “The Hangover” trilogy), production designer Mark Friedberg (“If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Selma”), editor Jeff Groth (“War Dogs,” “The Hangover Part III”), and Oscar-winning costume designer Mark Bridges (“Phantom Thread,” “The Artist”). The music is by Hildur Guðnadóttir (HBO’s “Chernobyl,” “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”).
Warner Bros. Pictures Presents, in Association with Village Roadshow Pictures, in Association with BRON Creative, a Joint Effort Production, a Film by Todd Phillips, “Joker.” It will be in theaters nationwide October 4, 2019 and will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures. This film has been rated R by the MPAA for strong bloody violence, disturbing behavior, language and brief sexual images. www.joker.movie