The Big Picture

Director Michael Giacchino discusses his pitch to Marvel’s Kevin Feige for Werewolf by Night, highlighting its timely nature and how it may not have been made if not for the current environment in the film industry. Giacchino shares insights on practical effects versus digital effects, the decision to film in black and white and later release in full color, and the impact of including the Avengers in the story based on test screening reactions. The director also opens up about his longstanding career with Disney, his love for making movies, and the support he received from Feige and Disney+ in bringing Werewolf by Night to life. He emphasizes the importance of creating a standalone story that anyone can enjoy without prior knowledge of the Marvel universe.

If you missed out on Collider’s theatrical screening of Werewolf by Night in color, fear not, readers! Following the very first big screen showing of the Disney+ Marvel special, Editor-in-chief Steve Weintraub sat down with the director, Michael Giacchino, for an extended Q&A.

During their conversation, Giacchino talks about his unusual pitch to Marvel’s Kevin Feige for Werewolf by Night and why it was so timely, saying, “If this had not been made until now, I don’t know that this ever would have gotten made.” They discuss using practical effects versus when to use digital, why Giacchino wanted black and white, how they originally filmed in color, and whether full color impacts the special’s gore factor. They talk about the reactions they first got from test screenings that prompted them to include the Avengers, where on the MCU timeline Werewolf falls, and if Giacchino will be continuing with Jack Russell (Bernal), Man-Thing (Jones), and Elsa Bloodstone (Donnelly). The Academy Award-winning composer also talks about his longstanding career with Disney, having composed the score for many classics, including Coco, Up, and The Incredibles, as well as series like Lost and Alias, and for Matt Reeves’ The Batman and more. He shares updates for his upcoming remake of 1954’s Them! and what else he’s looking forward to.

So many things make Werewolf by Night extra special, from the fact that it even got made under the cape-wearing superhero franchise to the fact that it’s one of composer-turned-filmmaker Giacchino’s first projects as director. The story, starring Gael García Bernal and Laura Donnelly, is based on the original comics that explore the darker corners of the Marvel universe, and to bring those to life, Giacchino opted to lean into his childhood favorites from the classic Universal monster movies to Hammer Horrors. Now, a year since its Disney+ premiere, Werewolf is being released in full color, with Harriet Sansom Harris’ Verussa Bloodstone, Kirk Thatcher’s fearsome Jovan, and Carey Jones’ Man-Thing emerging from the shadows!

Check out what he had to say below.

COLLIDER: Hans Zimmer has done this amazing tour with his music. Is there anything that you’re thinking about along those lines?

MICHAEL GIACCHINO: That is way too much work. Way too much work. No, I do concerts when they feel right to do. I’ve done plenty of them over the years, but I’ve never done a tour like that, and that’s really hard. I don’t know. I wanna kinda spend my time making something else, you know, making another movie. We can send the orchestra the music, orchestras play the stuff all the time all over the place, but to do a specific tour is just a lot of commitment, a lot of time commitment.

Image via Marvel Studios

Now that [Werewolf by Night] has been out and the reaction has been so positive, what was it like for you when it first came out and all the reviews were positive, and everyone was like, “Oh, this is really good?”

GIACCHINO: I was like, “Wait, what world am I living in where people actually like something?” You know? Because so often things are sort of just torn down and torn apart without regard to the amount of time and effort, and sweat and blood and tears that went into it. So, I was thrilled. I was happy. This was just a pure love letter to everything I loved as a kid, and I think people connect to that. People, so many of everyone in this room, I’m sure, grew up watching those old Universal horror films, watching the old Hammer films, and I love those things. They’re a huge part of my upbringing, a huge part of making me who I am today, so I think part of the response was that it was just, I was really in love with this subject and this subject matter in this film. This was not a job I took. I think sometimes when you watch movies, you can tell, “Oh, that was a job somebody took,” and then you can tell the movies that people are actually in love with what they’re doing, and I think there were so many people involved in this film that were in love with what they were doing.

So this comes out, everyone loves it. What is it like getting phone calls from different studios or different people when it’s like, “Let’s talk about you directing?” It’s not about the music, it’s about you getting behind the camera.

GIACCHINO: That was great. That was great because I grew up making movies. That’s all I did as a kid was make movies from age nine on, and music was not the thing that I thought I’d be doing, you know? If you had asked me as a kid, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I’d tell you, “I want to make movies.” I never would have told you, “I wanna score movies.” It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, and it has been great, I love doing that, but I really miss making movies. I got on this career path that sort of took me away from the ability to do that. At some point I just looked back, I think I was, like, sitting in my office one day looking at all of the scores of all the movies that I’ve worked on up there, and I was like, “Wow, that’s sort of just tiring even looking at it,” and that represents a lot of years. And I thought, “I probably don’t have as many years ahead of me as I did behind me, so if I wanna still do this, I should try and do it.”

You know, I had been talking to Kevin Feige over the years. He knew, not necessarily about directing, but he knew I wanted to do that, he knew I wanted to get back into that. One day, we were just talking, and he just said, “Well, if you wanted to direct something here, what would you want to direct? What would it be?” And I was like, “Werewolf by Night.” He’s like, “What? Werewolf by Night? Everyone always asks for Spider-Man or, you know, the giant stuff.” And I was like, “I like that because it’s weird. I had the comics as a kid, I love those.” I felt like that was a great story to tell. “It’s something nobody would expect from you, and I also feel like you’ve sort of cornered the market on this whole superhero thing. You guys also own all of this really awesome horror stuff, too. Why aren’t we doing that? That’s so fun.” And he was just like, “Okay, let’s make that.” And I was like, “Wait, really?” I was like, “Come on, if I knew it was gonna be that, I would have done that a long time ago.” He was incredibly supportive. Disney+ was just coming out, so they had this huge mandate to fill all of this space, so everything just happened at the right time.

If this had not been made until now, I don’t know that this ever would have gotten made in the environment we’re in right now in terms of everyone overspending and streaming and everyone trying to figure out what the heck they’re doing. What are movies? Nobody even knows what movies are anymore. I just think we fell in this sweet spot which allowed us to do this crazy thing that no one was expecting. Also, the fact that they were working on so many other things at the time, our little movie was just sort of like off to the side chugging along, and they just sort of left us alone and we were able to do this crazy, odd thing and bring it out into the world, which, I still think, is a miracle that this thing exists.

Image Via Marvel Comics

I also agree with that. I’m curious, so they let you do this, were there any parameters that they gave you that said, “Hey, you can do this, you can do this, but you gotta steer clear of this?”

GIACCHINO: No, none at all. And in fact, I wanted to make sure this was sort of a bottle episode, like a Twilight Zone episode. I wanted to make sure that this felt like something that anyone could watch without ever having seen anything related to Marvel. I wanted to be able to just sit down and watch something and enjoy it without worrying about, like, “What the heck did I miss? What is this?” And they were okay with that.

The funny thing was, when you’re making this stuff, you do test screenings, and you show it to people, and you see what the reaction is, and the first time we showed it, no one got it. No one got it. So many of the responses were, “Where’s Doctor Strange? Is Captain America gonna show up? Doesn’t Spider-Man…?” And I was just like, “What?” And I remember Kevin looked at me, and he goes, “Did we break the audience? We might have broken the audience.” I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” So I was just like, we can’t just go shoot a scene now with Captain America. We can’t do that. I said, “Okay, how about this…?” Because I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of the other stuff, but I was like, “The most I will do is what if we started off, the first thing you see is an illustration of the Avengers, and we go, ‘Okay, this is your world. This exists. Look, remember these guys? Alright, now we’re gonna go down here, we’re go down into the darkness, but they’re still up there. Don’t worry, everyone.’” And I’ll tell you, the second we did that everything was fine. It was the weirdest thing in the world. Everyone just needed to know, “Okay, my people that I love so much, they’re okay. They live in this world. They’re a part of this, they’re just not going to be seen tonight. I’m good with that.” They just needed to be told that thing. It took us, like, three test screenings to figure that out, what really was going on. So yeah, I can’t explain it.

The last time we spoke, I asked you this question, and you sort of evaded. Let’s see if you answer it. Do you wanna tell people when this takes place in the MCU timeline?

GIACCHINO: I would love to tell them, except I have no idea because I didn’t plan it that way. It wasn’t written out like that. It wasn’t meant to be something that fell in. It was meant to be designed so that if someday it would make sense to find out what time slot is best for it, then great, we can figure that out along down the road. But it wasn’t designed to be in a specific place at a specific time, other than to say that it exists around the time that those characters exist, too. So, who knows what they’re off doing? For all I know, they could have been, you know, beating up Thanos or something while this was going on. I have no idea. As far as the blip and all of that, I have no idea. No idea.

Well, let’s talk specifically about the in color part. For people that are not aware, you shot this in color and then did black and white in post.

GIACCHINO: Yes. I wanted to do it in black and white. They were not sold on that immediately, so they said, “Shoot it in color, and then we’ll see.” Now, when you’re shooting something for black and white, you light it very differently than you do when you’re lighting for color, so it was a little tricky. Our DP, Zoë White, who was incredible, she set up a special monitor just to have the black and white so we could review black and white as we were shooting. So I could always look and go, “Okay, that’s gonna work in black and white.” And then, once we edited the film together, it was Jeff Ford, the brilliant, brilliant, brilliant editor, we put it together, and then we filled it out. So we actually transferred it to black and white film and then rescanned it back in. So essentially, what you’re watching is a scan of a 35-millimeter printer in the end, and that was really great because we just wanted a look that we were not getting, both digitally and just with the way we had shot it, and that was the trick which really kind of like pushed it over the edge for us. Also, adding in all the reel change markers and things like that craziness.

I want to ask you specifically about the cigarette burn. For the audience who doesn’t understand or doesn’t know what a cigarette burn is, can you explain it and then also explain why you wanted that in the movie?

GIACCHINO: Yeah, back in the day when they were projecting on film, every theater had a guy who would sit up there, and there would be two projectors running, and one projector would be threaded up and ready to go, they’d start that, and depending on how big the reels were that they created, in about 20 minutes he would see these little white marks pop up on the upper right-hand side. Boom. Those were timings. You had three seconds to go before you had to turn this projector off and turn the other one on, and that way, it would be perfectly in sync, and you’d never know– I mean, you always knew a little bit because there was a little sound weirdness, I remember. Even when I watch movies, like when I watch Raiders [of the Lost Ark] now, I still remember every single reel change because I saw it so many times in the theater. But that’s what that was. It was just a callback to days when the only way to see these things was in a theater.

Image via Disney+

I heard something since the last time I spoke to you. I’m ambushing you with this, but I heard you have an obsession with Raiders.

GIACCHINO: I do have an obsession with Raiders. [Laughs]

And I heard you might have something cool in your place that has to do with Raiders. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.

GIACCHINO: Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies of all time for so many reasons because it was made for a price made on a schedule that was really tough, and it was where Steven [Spielberg] really learned how to juggle and get things done on time on budget. It was a movie that if he didn’t do right, he probably was not going to get the next film he wanted to do because he had had a couple of films that, while they were successful production-wise, it was really tough, and they all came in over budget, over schedule. So, for so many reasons, I love that film. So, anything I can collect or find from that film, I do, and I have a couple of pieces from it. We’ll just leave it at that. [Laughs] It’s not a big deal. I have Harrison Ford’s head at home in a thing.

Image via Lucasfilm Ltd.

I won’t push you any further. So, going into this, you have blood now in color, and in the black-and-white version, you can get away with a lot more. Did you tweak anything or do anything?

GIACCHINO: We thought we had gotten away with something with the black and white. We were able to do a lot more gore because of that. As it turns out, they didn’t seem to care because they didn’t make us take any of it out or pump down any of the reds or anything. So it was just like, “Oh, I guess we were worried for nothing.” I mean, I like to think this is fun gore. It’s not torture porn, which I’m not into that. There’s a lot of movies, like horror movies, that are much more torture porn. That’s not my thing. But I felt like this was more the kind of hard movie you’d make if you were 12 years old and had a camera in your backyard.

How did it come about with the in-color part? How long ago did Disney or Kevin Feige say to you, “Hey, do you want to do this?” Or did you go to them?

GIACCHINO: We did it as we were finishing the black and white one. It was always planned as a thing to, after we finished the black and white, “Let’s go back and let’s see if we can make a color version. Let’s see what would that look like to us.” We were all interested in what that would be, and especially as a fan of Hammer and horror films. I was like, “Yeah, if we can get into that mode where you’re really saturating all the colors and playing with the lighting, if we can do it, if we can make it work, then yes, let’s do it.” So we did some experiments with it. We were all just having so much fun that we just did the entire thing. It was done before the other one came out.

Image via Disney

That’s crazy.

GIACCHINO: So it’s been sitting there just waiting this whole time. We thought, “If the first one goes over well and people like it, then maybe it would be fun to release next year the color version as a bonus fun thing. The black and white one will always exist; that one, to me, in my heart, is the definitive version, but I feel like this is a fun way to kind of revisit it in another fashion.

If someone has not seen this before, both versions will be on Disney+. You want them watching the black and white first?

GIACCHINO: I think the first time you see it, you should see it in black and white because there is one thing about the color that is interesting, and I always wondered how that would play or not play, and that’s at the end when Elsa sits down in that chair, and she has the Bloodstone, and then you start to hear “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and the colors start to emanate from Elsa on out. The whole idea with that, for me, was that Elsa changed the world; she was able to do something that made a huge difference, and the best way for me to show that was to just bring this vibrant look to the world around her from the dreary, awful place that she was forced to grow up in and live. I thought that was such a cool way to say that she’s in charge now. She took back all of this power, and I don’t know what she’s gonna do with it. Hopefully, someday we’ll find out, but it was there for her to do whatever she chose to do with it as opposed to being handed something and being told what to do with it.

That was a story that we always wanted to tell from the beginning, and Heather Quinn, our writer, we spent a lot of time talking about that art, too. How do we best explain that or get that across? Because it’s a short film basically, and so there’s not a lot of real estate to tell all the story you would normally do in a long series, or even a 90-minute film gives you a lot more to play with.

Image Via Disney+

You obviously have to make this on a budget, and so I’m curious: you have moments where you can quote-unquote spend money, so how did you figure out, especially in the writing process, “Where are we gonna spend money? Where can we play?”

GIACCHINO: Right off the bat, the first time I looked at one of the budgets, and I was looking at all these massive numbers, I was like, “What is that for?” And they’re like, “Well, that’s our digital werewolf asset, and we’re gonna have to build that because he’ll probably be in most of the scenes of the film.” And I was like, “No, he won’t.” And they were like, “Well, it’s a werewolf movie…” I’m like, “Yeah, but maybe he’ll be in it for five minutes. Maybe. Maybe five minutes.” I never even really counted how long it is with him in it, but it’s probably around that. And I said, “No, no, no, the rest is all about getting to know the people and the characters and what they’re doing, what they want, and all of that. Then, boom, at the end, we’ll transform him and do it.” I said, “And by the way, it’s not gonna be digital, we’re just gonna put him in a suit. It worked for so many years that way, that’s the way we’re gonna do it.” The last thing I wanted was a digital werewolf because that would just feel wrong to me in some ways. I’ve seen movies that have done digital werewolves, and I’m not a fan of it. I know digital has gotten great, and as an additive, I think it’s wonderful. For some things, it’s incredible, like Man-Thing, please, it was really a work of art. But for him, I wanted it to feel like he was in the room, not just with the people, but with everyone who’s watching it. I wanted them to feel that visceral realness because you can tell. I think we all agree, you can tell when it’s not really there in the room with the people who are supposed to be acting with this thing.

That’s why we actually had a full-size Man-Thing on set, too, that was incredibly sculpted. It could move, and its eyebrows went up, and his eyes were all over, and his trunk moved. We had that for the actors to work with so that they could actually have– I said, “The last thing I want, I don’t want any actor to have to look at a tennis ball at the end of a pole.” You’ve all seen those behind-the-scene things. I was like, “None of that. I want real sets, everything as practical as possible.” And the practical side of it was a blast. I was like Stephen Stucker in Airplane!, going, “We can do this and we could do that! We could have this, and we could chop up his arm and throw blood everywhere!” And it was just lots of fun. It was just a fun, fun process. To have everything on set is great. When you don’t, I don’t like that. I like things there in front of us.

Image via Disney+

So it’s been a year since this has been out, is there any talk about these characters continuing now that it’s a year later?

GIACCHINO: There’s always talk. But, you know, until somebody decides to spend a penny, nothing happens yet. So, hopefully. My wish is that, yes, there will be more with these characters. I would love to, and I have ideas of what I would love to do with them, and it’s all crazy and nuts, but I think that’s the only way to go about it. So, hopefully, one day. Hopefully, one day.

This was obviously very successful, so did Kevin pull you aside after and be like, “Hey, so what else are you thinking?”

GIACCHINO: Well, we’re friends, so we always talk about that stuff anyway in the way that you would sit with your friends as a kid and be like, “Hey, did you see the new Star Trek thing?” That’s what we do anyway. So I think, you know, as is painfully obvious with all the studios, they’re all sort of rethinking and figuring out and reassessing how they make things. So I think there’s a process they need to go through, these growing pains with the streaming platforms, and once that happens, I think we can get back to figuring out what it is we want to do.

It came out since I last spoke to you that you might be doing a remake of Them! at Warner Brothers.

GIACCHINO: Yes, yes. This is true.

Image via Warner Bros. 

I’m curious if I can ask where are you in the development process, and do you think that is your next time directing?

GIACCHINO: There’s a really good shot that that’ll be the next one that goes, yes. Them! was a film in the 1950s about giant ants. It was sort of discussing the oncoming nuclear age that we found ourselves in and were woefully unprepared for as human beings, and so I thought there’s so much going on in the world—that was clearly a lesson that we didn’t learn as humans—and it feels like it’s a story that could be told again today with a lot of the shit that’s going on in the world. I love that movie dearly. It’s a very special film. So yeah, I was just having a meeting over at Warner Brothers, and I was meeting with the heads of the studio, and they were just asking. It was interesting because they were showing different things that they were working on, and I was like, “Oh, that’s cool. That’s cool,” but nothing really lit me up. And they were like, “Well, what would interest you?” And I was like, “Well, you know what? You do have a little movie that you made in the ‘50s. It was called Them!.” And they were like, “What?” And I was like, “Yeah, I really think there’s a fun take to be had with that,” and they were just like, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s make it.” And I was just like, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s make it.” [Laughs]

So, anyway, the development we’re in right now, we’re about to find our writer. We were about to make the deal, and then the writer’s strike happened. So then that went on pause, and we waited for 140-whatever days it was. So now we’re just starting up again.

It’s interesting because you’re talking about [Michael] De Luca?

GIACCHINO: Yeah.

I know that they are interested in doing IP that they own, so that fits into the criteria.

GIACCHINO: Yeah, I guess that was just lucky, right? I didn’t go to that meeting prepared to pitch anything like that. It wasn’t on my mind, but they asked the question, and that was what came to my mind. “Well, I mean, if I could do anything, it would be that,” and they’re like, “Okay,” so that was that. It was funny, somebody else in the room was like, “Wait, is that one of ours?”

Are you planning on keeping the same title, or are you thinking about redoing that?

GIACCHINO: I think. I don’t know. I don’t have a definite answer for that yet. We’re so early in, but I mean, it feels wrong to not keep it.

AUDIENCE: How was it working with the multitalented David Silverman?

GIACCHINO: Ah, the multitalented David Silverman. David Silverman, stand up! There’s David Silverman. His day job is working on The Simpsons, and he’s been doing that for 36 years. Basically, from the very first episode on The Tracey Ullman Show, David has been involved, and that show has evolved and grown in large part due to David’s contribution, so that’s awesome. The other thing David does is play a flaming tuba. On his off hours, he’ll play the flaming tuba, and I learned that many years ago when we met. We became very close friends, and we go to Burning Man together, and I play the drums, and David will play the flaming tuba. And when this thing came along, I just thought, “What a weird ritualistic thing we could use that for. We could do that during the ceremony when they’re marching up to the maze, and it would be a really fun thing.” I think one of the producers was over one night, and David was just playing it in the middle of the night in my backyard, and Brad Winderbaum was like, “We have to use that somehow. What is that thing?” Because everyone that sees it is like, “What?” And actually, I think my greatest accomplishment in my entire life was the fact that now there is a T-shirt sold on Hot Topic with a flaming tuba that says, “And so it shall be.” And I realized if I never do anything else in my life, I did that.

AUDIENCE: We got to see a 35 print last year. Did you have a print struck of the color?

GIACCHINO: No, not yet. Not yet. Maybe one day. That would be nice.

AUDIENCE: I was also curious, watching this with an audience for the first time in a year, was there anything that you look back on or notice or anything like that?

GIACCHINO: Oh, yeah, always. There’s a million things I could have done better, but I didn’t. [Laughs] And those things will always haunt you, but it’s okay. As long as everyone has fun with it and enjoys it, then I can let some of that stuff go.

AUDIENCE: In a lot of those original Universal monster movies, they’re kind of isolated, or even when they do team them up, it’s kind of like a versus. Is it a conscious effort for you and Ms. Quinn to kind of have the monsters unified in this project?

GIACCHINO: Yes, we wanted the monsters to be the actual real humans in the story because, to me, they always are. The monsters are the ones who have problems, they have issues. They are people who need help. They’re always tortured, and they’re always made fun of, and they’re always hunted, and I really wanted to tell a story that ended up in the point of view of the monsters. So yeah, for me, it was always about an alignment but also keeping you in this weird space of, “What is this guy doing there? Who is this guy and why is he doing it? Maybe he’s one of these hunters, but he doesn’t really seem like he is,” and, you know, questioning what that is. Then, of course, when he starts talking to Ted, and it’s like, “Oh, I get it,” and then suddenly the whole thing flips, and now it’s about their friendship and the fact that he’s just there to help his friend, and that’s what it’s about.

AUDIENCE: We’ve gotten to know you as a composer on every genre basically, and now that we’re starting to get to know you as a director, I wanted to know, do you think you’re going to stay in the creature feature horror space or do you think you’re going to try and do every genre?

GIACCHINO: I think, like the music I write, I like to try a lot of different things. I love this genre. I think it’s awesome. It’s really the best, and I wanna try other things, and then obviously, with them, that would be something. But yes, I want to try different things, as well. I like small stories, too, human stories. I like stories about growing up and things like that. To me, it’s gotten to the point where I think the bigger the movie is, the more afraid I am of going near it because I kinda wanna be able to tell personal stories, and sometimes it’s hard to do in those giant things.

AUDIENCE: As someone who’s worked a lot with Disney characters that appeared in theme parks, I was wondering what your reaction was when the werewolf showed up at Avengers Campus.

GIACCHINO: Oh, that was insane. That was insane. I was actually with a bunch of Marvel people, and they were getting texts from people at the park, and, “Look, look, look, look!” They were showing me these videos of the werewolf running around. I was like, “Wait, what? What is happening?” And they were like, “Yeah, we have them running around and chasing people,” and I was just like, “That’s incredible. I love that.” That was, again, sort of like the flaming tuba T-shirt, like a very high mountain I was happy to get to the top of. [Laughs]

When you do something successful for Marvel/Disney, do you get a passport for life?

GIACCHINO: You know, I have worked for Disney since 1992, really. I started with them in their publicity department. I moved over into the interactive department, and I produced video games for them. I’ve been with them a long time. So even when I technically left Disney, almost everything I have done has been for them, including Alias, Lost, all the Pixar stuff, the Disney. It’s just insane how much of my library is really Disney. I guess it could show you how giant they are.

Passport for life?

GIACCHINO: I don’t know for life. I’m sure if I did something bad, they’d take my pass away…

So, you get treated well at the parks?

GIACCHINO: They’re very nice, yes.

AUDIENCE: How long have you been working for Disney?

GIACCHINO: Well, since 1992, but doing lots of different things for Disney. There’s all kinds of jobs.

Image via Pixar

AUDIENCE: How long did it take to make Werewolf by Night?

GIACCHINO: Well, this is gonna sound crazy, but it was like 18 days we shot this. In 18 days. I don’t think anyone thought that it would happen, but we did it, and that was just because of being super organized and knowing exactly what you want going in without being like, “Well, I don’t know, I don’t know.” You gotta know what you want, you know, good or bad, right or wrong. You should know what you want and just go with it and commit to it. So it was a lot of prep and a lot of organization ahead of time, but we went in, and it was 18 days of shooting. Now, of course, we shot it in Atlanta, and I lived there for like two months beforehand for prep to watch all the sets get built and do all the stuff and work with the actors, but the shooting was 18 days.

AUDIENCE: What are your thoughts on Dial of Destiny?

GIACCHINO: My thoughts on Dial of Destiny? I don’t know, I’m just a fan like anyone else when it comes to that. Am I happy they made an Indiana Jones film? Sure. I was thrilled that they made an Indiana Jones film. Next question!

The issue is that Raiders is here, and no matter what they do, it will never beat Raiders. Raiders is just a masterpiece beyond a masterpiece.

AUDIENCE: Are there any other dream adaptations, like video games or any comics, like DC or Marvel, that you wanna do?

GIACCHINO: I don’t know. I mean, I feel like I’ve done so many of the things that I grew up loving as a kid anyway when you think about between, like, The Batman and Planet of the Apes and Star Trek and Star Wars. I mean, it kind of covered all the bases. The only thing I haven’t done is, like, a Snoopy thing or something. But I feel pretty good about what I’ve done, and I’m looking forward to now doing some more original things. I think it’s important to keep trying to put original ideas out into the world for us to look at and mess with and play with and keep everyone’s brains fresh, as opposed to just feeding them the same thing. You just don’t wanna be fed the same thing every day. It works for a little while, but then you get sick of it eventually. So, I yearn for the days of, like, the 1980s when every movie in the summer was this crazy different, great idea that had nothing to do with anything. So, I want more of that.

Also, you just did the score for J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow. For people who don’t realize, J.A. Bayona is a very talented filmmaker. How would you describe that score? I haven’t heard it yet.

GIACCHINO: It’s emotional. It’s very, I would say, also scary and slightly terrifying but also uplifting in a way. It’s all about someone who’s stuck in a place they cannot get out of, and it’s about how deep do you have to reach inside of yourself to survive an event like that? It’s about a plane crash that happened in the Andes in the early ‘70s, and a lot of people died, but a bunch of people, some of them survived, and they were there for a long time, months before anyone came and found them. It’s quite an extraordinary story. You should see it. Take a look at it.

Image via Netflix

Yeah, it comes out at the end of the year. I’ve heard nothing but great things. I heard it’s very, very powerful.

AUDIENCE: First of all, I just want to say that you’re like my favorite composer ever so being here tonight is, like, amazing for me.

GIACCHINO: Well thanks.

AUDIENCE: What’s your advice that you give to young filmmakers? I’m an aspiring director. What would be your advice?

GIACCHINO: My advice: make something. You have the phone, right? It’s got a camera, make it. Go do something. The advice is, do it. Don’t wait to do it, do it. If you’re a filmmaker, make films. Don’t worry about budgets and everything at this place, you have everything you need to make to tell a story. If I had had that phone in my pocket when I was that age, I can’t even imagine. I mean, I made a lot of movies when I was a kid—a lot—but if I had had that thing, it would have been just like a ton. So what I’m saying is take advantage of the technology you have at your disposal and make things. Just make things that are important to you, make things that make you feel something, that make you excited or scared, or whatever it is that you want to get across. Just do it, just make it, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, that’s for sure.

AUDIENCE: I’m a director-editor, and while I’m shooting something, I always like to think about the edit in my head while we’re shooting, so I was wondering what your process was like when directing something like this? Are you thinking about the composition while you’re shooting?

GIACCHINO: Oh, yeah. I think very editorially, actually, even when I’m writing or if I’m working with the writer or if I’m on set and someone says, like, “Oh, don’t you want the reverse of this?” I’m like, “No, because we’re just gonna cut out before that anyway,” you know? Knowing for sure the things that you can do when you wanna transition from one thing to another. I think, also, musically, too. I have to know in my head what I want tone-wise. A lot of times, I’ll write the music prior to shooting the scene, and I can bring it and let the actors hear it and give them an idea of what the tone is gonna be. It’s always hard to get when you’re just reading something, but if I can get across the idea of the emotional aspect of the scene that’s gonna be key, I can do that with music very easily. So yeah, I’m always thinking ahead of where I am, and when I’m shooting, I’m imagining in my head the type of music that it’s gonna be, and that way, I can also kind of define the pacing of a scene to find the pacing of certain dialogue, all of that. It’s very, very, very helpful.

AUDIENCE: Well, a werewolf is very classic character with a lot of iterations. This time, you have a very talented Mexican actor […] and his makeup is an homage to his heritage. I was wondering if you could just speak to getting to use that cultural lore to inspire the makeup and costume design?

GIACCHINO: It was incredibly important to me to make that connection to his history and his family because I figured somebody like Jack has probably lived a very long time and has outlived the family he’s had around him and has had to constantly remake his family every single time. Eventually, I imagine, he would get tired of that and just live by himself at that point. Then, these designs that he has on his face are the only connection left and the only thing he has to remind him of who he was and where he came from, and what was important. I wrote the music for a movie called Coco. That’s where I met Gael, on that film, actually, and I learned so much on that film about the Day of the Dead, of course, and all of this, and it just really inspired me to bring a lot of that into this. And Gael is honestly just one of the greatest actors on the planet. Every time I see him in anything, I’m just blown away by what he can do with so little. He can tell a story with one look, and it’s very hard to do. It’s very hard to do that, and when you find somebody who can just land that for you, it’s just incredible, and he’s just a super nice person, too.

Image via Disney+

AUDIENCE: How did you approach composing this score as the director, as well, for a project of this size?

GIACCHINO: The great thing is, Jeff Ford, who was the editor, he and I have done five movies together, so we’re very used to how we work together. But what was great about this, it was the best process I ever experienced in scoring a film which was Jeff worked in my offices where I write music, so he had an office there which was right next door to mine. So, I was writing music while he was editing. So he would edit a scene, he’d give it to me, I’d write the music. I’d go, “Oh, I need an extra shot here to do this thing I wanna do.” He’d give it back. We were able to go so quickly back and forth, and we were so in sync with the storytelling of it all, it happened so quickly. That was amazing to me because normally there’s a back and forth because you’re not together, and then he’s with a director on the film, and I’m just a composer, but this way, we were able to kind of just work in the same room basically together, and it was such a satisfying experience to be able to do that with him. And I think every cut he did would inform what I wanted to do, or I would do something that would then inform a cut that he would do, so it was a really collaborative process, the whole editorial process.

AUDIENCE: Do you have any favorite Easter eggs?

GIACCHINO: Yeah, there’s a fun Easter egg when Elsa sits down in the mausoleum. On the plaque, because everyone’s names are up in the graves there, the one that she sits next to, it says Jacob Howell McDougall. Now, Jacob Howell is a reference to Jacob Balcom and Matt Howell, who do the Werewolf by Night podcast [Bronze-Age Monsters]. When I was first starting to work on this thing, I just started looking up like, “Alright, well, what is around about Werewolf by Night besides these old comics I have?” And I came across this Werewolf By Night podcast. I was like, “What? There’s a podcast about Werewolf by Night? These guys have to be insane.” So, I listened to that podcast incessantly because it was great. They’re incredible, and they teach you all about the artists and the people that worked on them, and it just goes much deeper than just kind of reviewing the contents of the individual issues.

So, I just was listening to them, listening to them, and I couldn’t really reach out to them and say that I was listening to them because I was about to make this thing, and so I had to be very quiet about it, and then I was like, “Oh, but I want to support their thing,” So I did their however you pay for the monthly whatever for their podcast and then they emailed me, and they were like, “Um…are you Michael Giacchino?” [Laughs] I was like, “Yes, I am…” “We heard rumors that maybe you’re working on something?” I was like, “I can’t say anything right now, but when it’s done, we’ll talk.” So then I actually, I am really good friends with them now. They’re great guys out of Portland. I brought them down when we did the premiere last year, and they did the Q&A for us, and it was really fun. So that’s one of my favorite Easter eggs in the thing.

And let me tell you why I did it. I did it because on one of the episodes, they were complaining, Matt especially was complaining about [how] he hates it when he’s reading a comic book, and then the name of the writer is on the street sign or something or on a license plate or something like that. He goes, “I hate that! It just takes me out of the thing.” So I did that. [Laughs]

Image via Disney

And on that particular time, he was very happy.

AUDIENCE: So I have literally grown up listening to […] your Pixar stuff and throughout the years you’ve used orchestra, which definitely works here […] but then the credits come and there’s this glaring synthesizer and a drum machine, and it almost feels out of nowhere. It’s, like, unfitting with the film. I’m curious why you chose specifically to use a most synthetic element of this?

GIACCHINO: I thought we had just had an hour of classic, it was time to shake things up and just do something slightly different. And also to say that, “Look, while the story feels like it’s set in an older time, it’s actually a modern story.” This is a modern story being told about people who need our sympathies and people who need our help, and to look out for the people around you in your life that may not be asking for the help but may need it. That’s sort of what monsters– Those are the stories that I love, and they’re great allegories for that. It’s something everyone, every one of us, should just kind of keep in the back of our head as you go about your lives.

AUDIENCE: Even though trades reported on the fact that Werewolf was being made, Disney kind of kept it close to their chest until like a month out. How did it feel sitting on this golden egg knowing, like, “Wait a couple of months, you’re gonna get this nice little Halloween short?”

GIACCHINO: It was fun, but also, it was hard because I had scored like six movies that year because the pandemic shut everything down, and it’s a long story. Anyway, people would ask, “Alright, what are you doing next? What are you doing next?” And I couldn’t tell them because I didn’t have anything lined up beyond that, and I was just Werewolf at that point, and I could not say anything each time, and I was like, “When am I gonna be able to say something about this?” “Oh no, just wait, just wait, just wait.” They wanted to wait until D23 and do a whole thing there, which was a lot of fun also.

AUDIENCE: Will you ever let somebody else score one of your movies?

GIACCHINO: I think about that a lot. I think it would be an awful, awful thing. I think for me to do that to somebody, it feels like it would be more of a torture situation because I would know exactly what I want. But also, I do think about how it would be fun, maybe, to be surprised and see what else comes up if I do that. So maybe there will be a project that comes around that that will be the right thing to do.

You said that J.J. is actually good with music.

GIACCHINO: J.J. is great. We’ve always talked about a situation where I direct, and he composes. We haven’t figured out which that’s gonna be, or whether or not yet, but we’ll see. I think that I would love to do that. That would be fun because he’s really good.

So J.J. would be acceptable as a composer?

GIACCHINO: Very. I think so. For me.

AUDIENCE: Speaking of Easter eggs, I think I noticed one of the monster heads on the walls. Can you talk about those?

GIACCHINO: There’s some Easter eggs in there, too. One of them is—this is a deep cut, no one would know—Bigfoot. I mean, you might know it’s Bigfoot, but I was terrified of Bigfoot as a kid, so I wanted his head on that wall. Then there are two other ones. I did a short with Patton Oswalt and Ben Schwartz, and it was called Monster Challenge. They both play contestants in a game show that have to dress up as monsters and destroy this city that’s laid out in front of them. Each of their characters’ monster heads are on the wall, too. They were a little more goofy in my short and they, the, the guys that KNB, who did the makeup and all of the monster stuff, they really made them look evil and mean, so those are up there, and that’s kind of fun. There’s also, from the Werewolf by Night comics, there’s this crazy little bat thing that is up there, too…there’s Krog, who’s also from the comics, as well.

Image via Marvel

AUDIENCE: Are there plans for a physical release?

GIACCHINO: I have no idea. I mean, look, who knows? All bets are off, right? Because when Disney+ was announced, they were like, “…and it will be no physical releases.” What do you know? They’re selling Obi-Wan and all this other stuff now on DVD, so anything can happen. I have no idea, though, of any plans for that.

I vote yes.

AUDIENCE: One of my favorite moments is when Jack is trying to catch Elsa’s scent. Do you know what that story is?

GIACCHINO: I mean, we have an idea of what that was, that there was someone that he loved very much at one point in his life, and who knows where it falls in his timeline if he’s 400 years old. I don’t know. But I can imagine there was a time where he lost somebody and maybe this worked one time for him. I don’t know. The idea was that whatever it was, it was a painful memory. It wasn’t an easy one, and it was meant to give a sense of despair to what was about to happen, an uneasiness or an unsureness of what is gonna happen.

AUDIENCE: Was there one moment or scene that you really wanted to perfect or that you’re just so proud of in this short?

GIACCHINO: I really like the hallway scene. There’s two scenes. I like the transformation scene because I wanted to do a transformation where it’s not on him, it was on Elsa because this movie is really Elsa’s movie. It’s called Werewolf by Night, but, big surprise, it’s Elsa’s movie. And during that transformation, I just wanted to stay on her, not cut away. I was very happy they let me do long extended shots without having to cut away and do a lot of slicing and dicing. The other one was a hallway shot where he’s fighting those guys. We only got two takes of that because it’s so hard to do those stunts. It is so hard. And that’s an extended shot, like a minute or so, and that constant activity, they just couldn’t do it more than twice. He actually had to go lie down. The paramedics had to give him fluids for hydration and all of that because it’s so hot in that suit. His name is Luis [Valladares], our stunt werewolf, and he is incredible. So I’m very proud of the guys, of the stunt team, who really worked their butts off to get that thing. It was sort of like one of those Indiana Jones live stunt shows, in a way. Not easy to do, so you understand why they do a lot of cutting during fights because you just can’t shoot them the way you want to, all of them.

AUDIENCE: How did you get Laura Donnelly to do this?

GIACCHINO: Oh my god, I just asked her. I love her so much. I think she is one of the greatest actresses around, and she does not get enough credit for how good she is. One day, she will, I have no doubt. I have no doubt, one day she will. But she is one of the most delightful people to work with that you can imagine. Also, just one of the most trained professionals. She comes in, she knows her lines, and if you change three pages of dialogue on her, she’ll know it in two minutes. She’ll tell you, “Don’t worry, I got it. I got it. Don’t worry, I’ll remember it,” and she does….She gives you exactly what you need every single time.

Image Via Disney+

AUDIENCE: What was your favorite pun that you put on the score album?

GIACCHINO: Oh, probably “Mane on Ends,” M-A-N-E.

AUDIENCE: I just want to say first and foremost, I remember being a little kid with my dad seeing Star Trek in theaters and seeing the music stem when John Cho is on the drill and he gets the hero theme. That was the first time I felt represented on screen, so thank you very much.

GIACCHINO: Oh my god, and by the way, John Cho, the nicest person in the world. Actually, I worked with him on something, we were down at Comic-Con one year, and we were sitting in a van, we were doing a Q&A. He was opening a screening for us, we were doing a Star Trek thing. So I was just talking about, “What else do you do? What do you do when you’re not acting?” And this and that, and he goes, “You’re not gonna believe this, but I love to write poetry,” and I was like, “What? That’s awesome. Really?” He goes, “Yeah,” and I said I’m doing this thing for NASA in a month or so—I was doing a piece of music for them for the 60th anniversary—and I said, “Would you want to write something that could open the piece and that could be a part of what I’m doing?” So, he came with me to Washington at the Kennedy Center and read the poem, and it was, like, incredible. He’s just the best. I love him.

Yes, and I know exactly the moment you’re thinking about. It’s so cool because it was just– You know, Star Trek is so great because it just treats people as people, and that’s why it will always be my favorite of the space-faring things. It’s just because of its outlook on people. It’s not about its outlook on politics, it’s about its outlook on people. I love that. I love it for that. So, that’s so cool. I’m glad that you like that.

I have to ask you because I also love Star Trek, so what’s your ranking of The Original Series…?

GIACCHINO: Original Series.

It’s always number one?

GIACCHINO: Always. Original Series.

So, what do you think about, with Next Generation, DS9, Voyage, all the other shows? What’s your number two then?

GIACCHINO: I don’t know. The rest of them all kind of fall together for me except for, I have really been enjoying Strange New Worlds. I have to say that I could not believe that that musical episode cracked me up. I loved it. So I think they’re just doing crazy things with it, which I think you watch that show and you’re like, “Oh, they’re having fun with this now.” I like Lower Decks, too. But The Original Series, that’s what I grew up with. That’s what I watched all the time. I still watch it. I love it. I just sadly watched a million props go up for sale yesterday.

Image via Paramount+

The VFX guy.

GIACCHINO: Yeah, and God knows where all that stuff goes now, all into everyone else’s homes. It should really—not to bring up Raiders again—but it should be in the museum.

AUDIENCE: Speaking of collectibles, did you keep anything from set?

GIACCHINO: I have the big foot head. For Christmas, Marvel sent this giant box over to my house with a note that said, “Maybe this will help your head from getting any bigger than it is,” and this giant Bigfoot head. It was very sweet, and so that I have. I have a couple of the mausoleum plates and the sign above the mausoleum that said, “Without fear,” it’s written in Latin. A few things like that. I might have a couple of other smaller things that I might have pocketed.

Werewolf by Night in Color is now streaming on Disney+.