For Dunkirk, composer Hans Zimmer and filmmaker Christopher Nolan wanted an original score that was unlike any other for a World War II movie. As a maestro of synthesized themes going back to his days with the pop band The Buggles and his early scores such as Rain Main and Driving Miss Daisy, one might assume that’s an easy feat for Zimmer. However, as the Oscar-winning composer of The Lion King details in our interview, cracking a sonic world was something he had to continually go back to the drawing board for with Dunkirk. Zimmer talks about his long-running working relationship with Nolan, which has spanned such movies as Interstellar, Inception, and The Dark Knight trilogy, as well as his co-composing with Benjamin Wallfisch on Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi opus Blade Runner 2049.