Marvel Studios' upcoming Halloween special for Disney+, rumored to be based around Werewolf by Night, has found its director in The Batman's composer Michael Giacchino. Marvel Studios has been hard at work on their upcoming Halloween special, having cast Gael García Bernal and Laura Donnelly for the special. With the MCU expanding into more supernatural stories like Blade and Moon Knight, Werewolf by Night makes a certain amount of sense. Yet unlike a feature film or a long-form television series, it was unknown how Marvel would approach the project and if they would entrust it to an established filmmaker, a veteran television director, or a relative newcomer.
According to The Wrap, The Batman composer Michael Giacchino is set to helm the Halloween special for Marvel. Giacchino directed the 2018 short film Monster Challenge and an episode of the animated series Star Trek: Short Treks but this will be his biggest project to date. This is also not the composer's first time collaborating with Marvel Studios; he has composed the score for Doctor Strange, all three MCU Spider-Man movies, and is composing the score for the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder.
Giacchino also has a long working relationship with the Walt Disney Company, as he composed a number of Pixar films like Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and Inside Out. His work on Up! earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, so it makes a certain amount of sense that given his long work history both Disney and Marvel Studios would feel comfortable and confident hiring him for a project like the Marvel Halloween Special, which will carry a certain amount of weight and expectations but not as much as a whole feature film. If the special is a hit, it will be interesting to see if Giacchino transitions from composer to director, or if he will find time to do both as he has become one of the most in-demand composers working today.
Source: The Wrap