Musical chameleon Mike Patton has announced that he’s working on a score for the Netflix adaptation of the Stephen King novella 1922. In November of last year, it was announced that Netflix would be making a movie based on King’s short story. Zak Hilditch will direct the movie based off of the screenplay that he wrote. The story is told through the narration of the main character who confesses to murdering his wife and later believes that she is haunting him. Not much else has been revealed about the movie, but we have learned that Mike Patton has already composed the score.
Mike Patton, who is probably best known as the lead singer of the experimental rock band Faith No More, recently spoke to Rolling Stone about his new black metal project Dead Cross with ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. At the end of the article, Patton casually mentions that he has composed the score for 1922, based on the literature of Stephen King. Here’s how the music legend described the impending soundtrack.
“It’s more haunting and Hitchcock-y than you might think.”
This is exciting news for fans of King and Patton, especially when one thinks of Patton channeling Hitchcock. Patton started scoring work in 2005 when he was approached to compose the score of an independent movie called Pinion. However, the movie has never been released. Patton went on to score the short movie A Perfect Place, which is notable because the score took longer than the movie to make. In 2009 Patton composed the score for Crank: High Voltage and in 2014 he composed the eerie score for The Place Beyond the Pines, which has been his biggest score to date. Director Derek Cianfrance gave Patton total artistic freedom to do what he wanted with the score for The Place Beyond the Pines, a process that Patton took by the reigns and came out with beautiful, unsettling pieces of music.
He also voiced the vampire-like creatures in Will Smith’s I Am Legend and provided the narration for the futuristic thriller Bunraku starring Josh Hartnett. He also collaborated on the theme song to Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies with System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, with both parties singing on the single titled Bird’s Eye, which turned out to be a bigger hit than that action thriller itself. On the acting side, Mike Patton headlined the little seen 2005 thriller Firecracker, where he played dual roles.
Patton is a huge fan of movies, particularly horror and noir. One of his many musical projects, Fantomas, made a record of all movie and TV show scores, entitled The Final Cut. The band puts their sonic touches on these classic scores and turns them into something completely new that is still recognizable. For instance, the “Theme of the Godfather” is turned into a thrash metal song with bizarre guttural vocal noises added from Patton. It’s an interesting album to say the least. Patton is always pushing the boundaries of his creativity and always has from his days in Mr. Bungle all the way up to his more “conventional” work with Tomahawk. Though, he’s quick to note in the Rolling Stone article that more Faith No More music could be on the way, as that band has become an ‘open book’, and his next record, taking the front man choirs in Dead Cross, will be available this August.
1922 does not yet have a release date, but it is on the 2017 slate and it is currently in post-production. The movie will star Thomas Jane (Hung) and Molly Parker (House of Cards). If the score of The Place Beyond the Pines is any indication of where the 1922 score can go, viewers will be in for a treat. Patton is an artist who does things the way he wants and the results are always fearless and unique.