Tag Archives: Oscar disqualification

Johann Johannsson, Dead at 48

It was a shock to receive word on Saturday morning that Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson had been found dead in his Berlin apartment. As Variety‘s resident film-music writer, it was my sad duty to talk with his manager and write the story as quickly as possible. Here is that obituary. I had known him since his Oscar nomination for The Theory of Everything (the photograph of us is from a post-screening Q&A we did together in early 2015; our first interview was in late 2014) and we did a fascinating interview in late 2016 for the Directors Guild magazine that also included his longtime collaborator Denis Villeneuve; that story is here. I was a great admirer of his scores for Sicario (Oscar nominated in 2015) and Arrival (unfortunately disqualified for Oscar consideration in 2016; here is the full explanation of that). It’s been a tremendous loss for the film-music community, and the days since his death have seen an outpouring of emotion.

This year’s Oscar music controversy

The disqualification of “Alone Yet Not Alone” from the Best Song category was much talked-about, yet hardly the first time that a tune from an obscure movie managed to sneak into the category. I attempted to add some historical perspective to the discussion with this Variety story. Then I broke down this year’s nominees in both Song and Score categories.