Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone, but Clint Mansell has revealed that he will once again re-team with Darren Aronofsky and will score the director’s upcoming supernatural thriller “Black Swan,” starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.
The film is currently shooting in New York and centers on a talented ballerina (Portman), in the New York City Ballet who is tormented by a rival (Kunis) who may or may not be a figment of the dancer’s imagination.
Mansell further reveals that he and Aronofsky have already discussed plans for the potential score and want to develop a score heavily drawn from Tchaikovsky’s 19th century ballet, “Swan Lake.”
“Well it’s all really embryonic at the moment, one of the main ideas we’ve got is building the entire score out of elements from ‘Swan Lake,'” Mansell told LittleWhiteLies. “I mean it would have to be vastly screwed with, but that’s a starting point. Sometimes we’ve had ideas in the past and you put them into practice and they just suck, so we’ll see. Darren only just started shooting so for now it’s about doing the nuts and bolts really and providing him just what he needs to shoot with and in January I’ll start to mess around with some of the things we’ve talked about.”
We recently reviewed the script for “Black Swan” and described it as being loosely based on “Swan Lake” plus actress Kunis has also been describing the film as a “real life version of the third act of ‘Swan Lake'” so it’s a definite thematic fit. But to recap, potentially a Clint Mansell re-interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ to back Aronofksy’s “Black Swan”!? Yes, please.
“Black Swan” should see a release sometime (hopefully sooner rather than later) in 2010 through Fox Searchight.
That should be interesting/challenging considering that Clint Mansell can't read music, doesn't know a lick of music theory, and is generally very uncomfortable when outside of the pop/guitar based composition arena.
He's going to adapt Tchaikovsky? Yeah… ok.
See, shit like this is what I'm talking about. One of my favorite musical moments is Morricone's reworking of Saint-Saens in Days of Heaven. Take a great piece of classical music, fuck with it, and make good (catchy/moving/provocative) scores. No more of this going through the motions James Horner Howard Shore Hans Zimmerman bullshit.
Clint Mansell is the man, the Fountain score is simply amazing.. One of the best ever scores, it really enhances the film.