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John Williams won't score a Steven Spielberg film for the first time in 30 years

John Williams won't score a Steven Spielberg film for the first time in 30 years

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For the first time in 30 years and only the second time in his career, John Williams won't be scoring a new Steven Spielberg movie. It was announced today that composer Thomas Newman, who did American Beauty, will instead be scoring Spielberg's next film, a cold war thriller called Bridge of Spies. Williams and Spielberg have famously been working together for over 40 years now, with Williams scoring every Spielberg feature but 1985's The Color Purple. Their collaborations have resulted in incredibly iconic musical themes, like those for Jaws and Jurassic Park.

Williams will continue working with Spielberg on The BFG

Disney, which is distributing the film, says that Williams' involvement was impeded by "a minor health issue," which it says is "now corrected." Williams will resume working with Spielberg for his next picture, an adaptation of The BFG.

There's one other big film that we recently learned Williams won't be scoring: the Star Wars spinoff Rogue One. That'll be the first major Star Wars feature without Williams behind it — you'll still hear his music in The Force Awakens. Instead, composer Alexandre Desplat, who just won an Oscar for The Grand Budapest Hotel, will score the film. Given how many spinoffs Disney and Lucasfilm intend on making, it's perhaps no surprise that Williams won't be part of Rogue One. That spinoffs would provide a constant stream of films for him to work on, so we may continue to see films outside the main trilogy without his name on them.