Legendary composer Ennio Morricone has signed on to score Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming film. Morricone worked on The Hateful Eight, which earned him his sixth Oscar nomination as well as Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice awards. His six-decade career saw his genius touch over 500 films, so it’s no wonder than Tarantino would want to work with Morricone again. “Tarantino has already told me that there will be a next movie that we are going to make together,” the composer said, “I told him that in the future I would like to have much more time. I would like to start working with him even long before in order to have the time to work, to think about the music, and also to exchange more ideas with him about what I am going to score for him.” Read more about the duo’s unlikely partnership here.

Tarantino, a film aficionado if ever there was one, has long wanted to work with Morricone and since Kill Bill has even used his themes in his movies. He told me in our Christmas Eve videotaped conversation in his home screening room that he flew to Rome to meet with the Maestro in the hope of convincing him to do an original score for The Hateful Eight, which had already completed shooting. Morricone agreed eventually to provide a theme, but one thing led to another and he turned out a complete score including overture. It is the first time in some 40 years he has composed music for a Western as well as the first time one of his Western scores has been Oscar nominated despite that timeless work he did in the ’60s for Sergio Leone’s series of so-called “spaghetti Westerns” (a term Morricone hates).