‘Dune’: How Composer Hans Zimmer Invented a Retro-Future Musical Sound for the Arrakis Desert Planet

Director Denis Villeneuve wasn’t alone in fulfilling a teenage dream to make “Dune.” Composer Hans Zimmer satisfied his own fantasy by composing an otherworldly score inspired by Frank Herbert’s hallucinatory 1965 sci-fi adventure novel.

In fact, the Oscar-winning Zimmer (“The Lion King”), who has also amassed 10 nominations, could very well win his second award for this musical masterpiece: an experimental retro-future invention of instruments and sounds to convey the beauty and danger of the Arrakis desert planet — from the rhythm of the wind pushing the sand between the rocks to the pounding percussion of the monstrous sandworms.“We both read it as teenagers, but we didn’t make the movie with hindsight of age and wisdom,” Zimmer said in a recent interview with IndieWire.

“As soon as we started, we were transported back in time … and I did music with the recklessness and craziness that only a teenager has.

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