Bird Box score co-composer Trent Reznor has blasted the huge Netflix hit as a waste of his time. It’s been one year since the Sandra Bullock-led Bird Box was released and, to the surprise of many, went on to become one of the biggest Netflix original movies of all-time. So huge was the thriller that it even launched its own viral challenge that had fans imitating the movie’s characters by trying to undertake tasks while blindfolded (the dangerous challenge ultimately led to accidents, prompting Netflix to warn its subscribers against trying it).
The blindfold element of the challenge was of course inspired by the movie’s premise, which concerned mysterious creatures driving people insane who failed to blindfold themselves while navigating the outdoors (the creatures for some reason had no power over people who remained inside). Starring Bullock as a mom protecting her two kids from the perils of this post-apocalyptic world, the film indeed pulled huge numbers for Netflix, being seen by 26 million people its first weekend according to Nielsen. A sequel to Bird Box seems inevitable, and in fact the author of the original book Josh Malerman has promised a follow-up novel.
Though Bird Box certainly has many fans as the numbers prove, not everyone loved the Netflix thriller, and that group of detractors includes one of the men who composed the movie’s score. Oscar-winning Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame spoke to Revolver about the process of writing the music for Bird Box together with collaborator Atticus Ross and indicated that it was a miserable experience:
"When we got immersed in it, it felt like some people were phoning it in. And you're stuck with a film editor who had real bad taste. That's kind of our barricade to getting stuff in the film. And the final icing on the s--t cake was we were on tour when they mixed it. And they mixed the music so low, you couldn't hear it anyway. So it was like, that was a...that was a f--king waste of time. Then we thought, no one's going to see this f--king movie. And, of course, it's the hugest movie ever in Netflix."
Before taking on the evidently unhappy task of composing the score for Bird Box, Reznor and Ross enjoyed a much more positive experience doing the music for David Fincher’s The Social Network, and indeed went on to win an Oscar for their work. Since then, Reznor and Ross have done the music for Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl, and will compose the score for Fincher’s upcoming drama Mank. In addition to their work with Fincher, Reznor and Ross also composed music for this year’s HBO drama Watchmen and Reznor (as "The" Nine Inch Nails) contributed an original song to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return.
Clearly, Reznor and Ross have established themselves as one of the top composing duos in Hollywood, but it’s unlikely that when they tout their resume they will be putting Bird Box at the top of the list. Indeed, Reznor’s remarks about the movie and specifically its editor Ben Lester, whom Reznor accuses of having “real bad taste,” make it seem the whole production was less-than-top-notch. Regardless of what issues the film may have had during shooting, editing and (especially) scoring, Netflix was surely happy with the resulting viewership numbers and Bird Box 2 is probably still an inevitability.
Source: Revolver