The Dark Knight Score Disqualified From Academy Award Consideration

Warner Bros. recently launched a “For Your Consideration” campaign for “The Dark Knight,” pushing Best Picture, Best Director and Heath Ledger for Best Supporting Actor among others but the score of “The Dark Knight” has been left out from Academy Awards consideration. Formal letters to that effect are expected to go out this week to composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who collaborated on the music. Apparently the decision of whether to include the score for The Dark Knight in the running or not involved four hours of discussion over the past two executive committee meetings, but apparently the fact more than 60%, but less than 70%, of the score was credited to Zimmer and Howard was an issue. The unfortunate thing here is the decision to include the three additional names – music editor Alex Gibson, ambient music designer Mel Wesson and composer Lorne Balfe – was a way of financially rewarding parts of the music team who helped make the overall work successful. I guess karma doesn't always work for awards, but with The Dark Knight now only $2.4 million away from over $1 billion in box-office receipts I would say karma has a way of working things out. The original soundtrack for the Christopher Nolan-directed superhero movie has been released in four different formats, a standard jewel case CD, a 2 LP set of heavy-weight 180 gram vinyl version, a special edition digipack, and a collector's edition with special artwork, on July 15. Containing original scores from composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, the orchestral soundtrack was recorded in London in April 2008.