A Festival for Film scoring has arrived!

Have you ever been to a symphonic concert featuring the greatest hits of John Williams? If not, we highly recommend it, especially if you ever get the rare chance to see the maestro himself conduct. It’s spine-tingling. Exciting. Different from any other concert, as it carries an additional emotional baggage with it. You’re instantly transported through time and space. And if you grew up with his films, you’ll feel that same childhood wonder and excitement rush back into your veins.

Image from Music by John Williams | ©Disney

Now, that same experience is expanding. On November 8, 2025, Los Angeles will host Future Ruins, a new festival dedicated entirely to film and television music. The one-day event was created by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, longtime collaborators known for their work in Nine Inch Nails as well as scores for films like The Social Network, Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The goal? To bring together a diverse group of composers (from cult icons to Emmy and Oscar winners) and present their work in a rare live setting, as explained in the festival’s website:

“Each artist is encouraged to take big swings and reimagine their work for a live audience. Ranging from electronic sets and live bands to orchestral performances, fans have the chance to experience live debuts from composers who rarely appear onstage”

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

A soundtrack is as essential to a movie as popcorn is to the moviegoing experience.

It’s cultural. Timeless. And also invisible.

It’s the emotional architecture beneath every scene, shaping how we feel even when we’re not fully aware of it. As the saying goes in the industry: you can save a mediocre film with the right music. 

“The greatest way to demonstrate how much music affects movies, play it absolutely with no music at all. And then go back, and do the whole scene again, with all the cues”, Steven Spielberg on Music by John Williams documentary.

Yes, scores guide us through suspense, triumph, grief, and revelation. In some cases, the music becomes as iconic as the movie itself. Think of the James Bond theme: big brass, bold rhythm, instantly recognizable. You simply can’t make a Bond film without it. (By the way, if that interests you, check out The Sound of 007,  a deep dive into how the music was composed and shaped the Bond legacy).

In recent years, the boundary between traditional composers and popular musicians has blurred. Artists like Trent Reznor, Tyler Bates (Marilyn Manson’s longtime guitarist and composer of 300, the John Wick series and the Pearl saga), and Geoff Barrow (Portishead’s multi-instrumentalist and co-composer of Ex Machina and Annihilation) have gained recognition in both the industries.

But for fans, the experience of these scores remains mostly passive, consumed through headphones or embedded within a film. Rarely do we get the chance to hear them live, interpreted by the artists who created them. Future Ruins changes that. For the first time, many of these composers will step out of the studio and onto the stage.

FROM MOVIE THEATERS TO FESTIVALS

This shift isn’t coming out of nowhere. For years, fans have flocked to symphonic concert tours dedicated to legendary composers like John Williams, whose music from Star Wars, Jurassic Park and Harry Potter has been performed live by orchestras around the world. Hans Zimmer, perhaps the most high-profile film composer working today, has sold out arenas with his immersive live shows, blending cinematic scores with rock-star stage production.

Still, most of these concerts seem to focus on orchestral works, aka “the new classical”. But what about other composers working outside that mold? What about Cristobal Tapia de Veer, whose strange, layered and deeply satisfying score for The White Lotus helped define the show’s tone? Or John Carpenter, who composed his own minimalist electronic soundtracks for films like The Thing and Halloween?

"Going from Hollywood studios to Boston (Pops) was very, very satisfying [...]. There's an orchestra, there's an audience. The music is brought to life. People applaud. And for the wounded ego of a Hollywood composer who never has an audience to get some applause, it's lovely", John Williams

Future Ruins is here for that. It’s a platform that invites composers of all kinds onto the same stage, with a lineup that reads like a who’s who of modern screen music like: Danny Elfman (Beetlejuice, Batman...), Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker, Chernobyl, Sicario...), Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin (Suspiria, Dawn of the dead...) and Terence Blanchard (Cadillac Records, Inside Man, etc.), to mention a few.

The event also features a rare performance of Howard Shore’s score for Crash of David Cronenberg. Shore, for the record, is the legendary composer behind Lord of the Rings, The Fly and many of Cronenberg’s films.

“There’s no hierarchy. Every artist is a headliner”, Trent Reznor.

Even if most of us won’t make it to Future Ruins this year, the festival represents something larger: a growing recognition that film scoring deserves the spotlight and the stage. Hopefully, it’s the beginning of a broader movement, one where composers step into the spotlight, and fans finally get to hear the music that made them cry, scream, or cheer... all while replaying the movie in their minds.