Thirteen years ago, composer Simon Franglen worked with James Cameron and composer James Horner on “Avatar.”

But Horner’s 2015 death left a big hole for the music team to fill for the upcoming sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

“In the gaping absence that Horner left, we kept the core of his ‘Avatar’ music team together, completing James’ work on Dis- ney’s Pandora — The World of Avatar [themed area Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom] and so, I was more than ready in late 2017 when Jim [Cameron] asked me to read the scripts for the sequels,” Franglen says.

Bringing the composer into the production early allowed the score to evolve with the films. “One of the unexpected delights was being able to design unique Pandoran musical instruments for the film, then having the prop department bring them into reality,” he says.

Family is very much the heart of the movie and the heart of the score. “Avatar: The Way of Water” introduces additional characters and environments to audiences.

“I’ve been tasked with bringing new textures, voices and elements to the score. The sea is integral to many of the themes and motifs in my score; the scintillation of light, the ebb and flow of waves, and the connection of the Na’Vi [characters in the movie] with the water were all inspirations,” Franglen says.

The film’s score was as grand as the film’s themes and imagery. Franglen, who held recording sessions in L.A., adds: “I’ve been able to feature a great diversity of singers and featured musicians from across the world, all bringing their unique textures to the score, such as the wonderful choir Tenebrae from London, and a chorus from the Pacific islands.”

Baz Luhrmann was ready for an “Ocean’s 8” level heist on the set of “Moulin Rouge!”

Oscar nominee Luhrmann recalled the strict security required for the then-history-making custom necklace worn by Nicole Kidman in the 2001 movie musical. While a crystal “stunt double” replica was made for a pivotal scene in which the necklace is ripped off of Kidman’s Satine, Luhrmann revealed that the real thing required its own security team.

“Back in the day when we did ‘Moulin Rouge!,’ we did our own version of a Cartier diamond necklace for Nicole Kidman,” Luhrmann told Vulture. “See, in those days, you couldn’t make something sparkle on film like real diamonds. You needed real diamonds. So that necklace is real. It’s worth $2.5 million. The problem is, if you bring something of real value on set, you need two security guards standing by at all times.”

The “Elvis” director added, “Luckily, now you can just do the sparkle in post.”

Luhrmann and his wife, Oscar-winning costume designer Catherine Martin, conceived the lace diamond necklace with jewelry designer Stefano Canturi. The 134-carat white gold necklace is made up of 1,308 diamonds and has a Sri Lankan blue sapphire on the clasp, per The Adventurine. Patricia Canturi, the brand director of the Canturi label, said Stefano spent weeks researching late-1800s French jewelry for the necklace to be as accurate as possible. Kidman’s neck and décolletage were fitted across three months for the custom piece. The iconic necklace currently resides in the private personal Canturi collection.

“I’m probably the Stanley Kubrick of confetti,” Luhrmann told Vulture of his signature Shakespearian operatic opulence onscreen. “George Lucas saw ‘The Great Gatsby’ and said, ‘The thing that you do is you create worlds’ — and this is a great phrase — ‘with an immaculate reality.’ Meaning that it doesn’t matter that the audience understands the rules on the outside, only that on the inside, the reality is immaculate. You can’t just arbitrarily do a thing because you feel like it. The reality has got to be so immaculate that within it, the audience will buy into the world. You’ve entered sci-fi, meaning you’ve entered another world, an off-planet world, even though it’s set in this world.”

Luhrmann continued, “I have a running gag, which is that you could populate all of these movies with the same characters. All-powerful Barry Fife in ‘Strictly Ballroom’ is Zidler in ‘Moulin Rouge!,’ and the Colonel in ‘Elvis.’ There’s always a Colonel Tom Parker. And there’s always a Christian in ‘Moulin Rouge!’ — a writer or a pure soul. Christian is an Orpheus character: somewhat gifted, looking for ideal, perfect love, and he descends into the underworld. And then there’s Satine. She is the muse and the idol and the perfect love.”

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Journalist Jemele Hill takes no satisfaction in having called former president Donald Trump a white supremacist ahead of the curve.

“While, I guess on one hand, you could I guess say that I should take some level of ‘I told you so’ into this, I don’t really see it that way,” Hill told TheWrap during a recent interview. “It’s depressing, to be honest, to think that how much he changed the political climate in this country and how a lot of the tone and mentality that has been mainstreamed because of the way he conducted himself in office will have long term ramifications on our political climate.”

In the five years since Hill tweeted those fateful words, which drew criticism from her then-employer ESPN and the former president himself, she says she looks back with regret — not for calling Trump a white supremacist, but for being right.

“Now people say it like they’re saying his last name. Like ‘I think his last name is white supremacist’ with a regularity in which people say it. It’s one of those things I wish I wasn’t right about,” she said. “Given the leadership position, given how important it is, for the person in that office, who’s a world leader, the last thing you want is to say you live in a country that was run by white supremacist and then so infected our American political climate that we will never maybe in my lifetime be up under the stain he has left on the office of the president.” 

Hill shared these thoughts along with many others in a recent interview with TheWrap about her new book “Uphill.” The memoir, released October 25, traces Hill’s life story and journey before and after Trump’s presidency.

“This was a process that started back in 2019. It was at that time at that point that the book might be out within like another year or something like that, but obviously, the pandemic hit, and it kept pushing back the time, more and more,” she said. “One year went into two years, and then we’re going to two and a half plus years. I understood the reasoning because now my book publisher really wanted me to be able to go out on book tour and do what I’m doing now, which is engaging people talking about the book and you know, really being out there publicly.”

While it did feel emotional to write “Uphill,” Hill didn’t find it too difficult or challenging to write about some of the toughest times of her life.

“There’s some difficult subject matter in there, but the difficult parts from a pure writing standpoint were not hard to write because so much of that was fresh in my mind. The way things happen when you think about something that was painful, it’s not hard to trigger and conjure where that pain is coming from,” she added. “I certainly had to have some difficult conversations with my mother in terms of getting certain details and asking her about, frankly, what were some of the worst moments of her life. And those were not easy conversations to have, but when it came to the actual writing of it, even though it was emotional to do it, that part was actually easy to write.”

“Despite the many setbacks, it wound up being the perfect time. And just from a writing perspective, I’m also glad I had that time as well, because, you know, it’s my first book, and there’s a lot of care and patience that I took in writing it,” she continued. “Obviously, I’m very transparent about some very difficult issues that I faced in my childhood. And so I wanted to be assured that I got those things right, and that the story felt right and it felt like the narrative that I felt like my story deserves so there was so much that went into it, it was exhilarating, but an emotional experience writing it.”

Hill applies that same patience to the TV show she is currently working on with Gabrielle Union, detailing her learned appreciation for trusting the process in Hollywood. Production has not yet started on the series, but she’s hopeful the series — which was first announced in 2020 — will be moving forward soon. Union will help portray a very loosely inspired story based on Hill’s friendship with the co-founder of their production company, Kelly Carter.

“One thing about living in LA is you have to learn to develop an appreciation for the fact that it takes a long time to make — I remember when the I think it was the creator of ‘Squid Game’ talked about how it took 10 years to get that made, or even the series ‘Yellowstone,’ which is very popular. I mean, they got no’s everywhere in Hollywood and finally got it made, it’s one of the most watched series on television,” she said. “I remind myself of these things because it is an arduous process, partly because you want to get it right and you want to make sure that everything’s in the best place they can be.”

Composer Alexandre Desplat, known for his work on films like The King’s Speech, Argo and The Grand Budapest Hotel, sought to keep the “innocence” and “vibrant heart” of the Pinocchio story alive through his score in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming stop-motion film, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.

Using only wood instruments, such as a violin, piano or harp, he wanted to connect music to the 1883 novel by Carlo Collodi on which the film is based.

“I think the real key to it was always the emotion, trying to keep the vibrant heart of Pinocchio beating, and make sure that we always feel this innocence that he has,” Desplat tells The Hollywood Reporter as part of Netflix’s Playlist series. “He doesn’t know anything about anything. But he believes in everything. He’s so open-minded. That’s the beautiful thing about Pinocchio.”

The film, which was produced by Netflix Animation, the Jim Henson Co. and ShadowMachine, was a passion project of del Toro’s since 2008 and marks his animated feature film directorial debut, which he co-directed with Mark Gustafson. Del Toro also wrote the screenplay with Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins. Del Toro and Desplat have known each other since Del Toro’s DreamWorks days, and they collaborated on Del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Starring Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard and Cate Blanchett, the film also features original songs written by del Toro with Desplat and Roeben Katz.

Pinocchio will be released in select theaters on Friday before it hits Netflix on Dec. 9.

Below, Desplat talks with THR about scoring the film, working with del Toro and more.

How did your involvement with Pinocchio begin? I know you previously worked with Guillermo del Toro on his 2017 film The Shape of Water.

I knew that Guillermo had a project for a while — to one day direct Pinocchio — and suddenly he was ready to go, and I received a script, and he told me, “You’ll see, there are some chapters which are meant to be songs.” Not like a real musical where everybody’s singing but just chapters where the characters would sing, and that’s where we started because, as you know, these stop-motion pictures, they take ages to be made. If I’m not mistaken, it took them 1,000 days of shooting, so it’s quite a bit, and that’s where we started. I met with Guillermo in the studio. We started fooling around with the songs, the ideas, the characters, what music or what lyrics should convey which character, and so that’s the very beginning. Then we brought in Roeben Katz, a friend of mine and a lyricist, to work with us on the lyrics. And at some point, we’re ready to go with the actors to record the songs. That was [two or] three years ago, a long time ago during COVID. And the great news was that we had a cast of people who could sing. A wonderful boy — well, he’s not a boy anymore, but [Gregory Mann] was 10 at the time with this marvelous and pure innocence — and I knew that Ewan was a very good musician and that Christoph was a great musician, so we were very, very lucky to have these people on board. The funny thing is that we recorded them in all these [different] places.

So it sounds like you waited to see the finished film before you started to compose the score?

Yes, that’s always what I’m doing: watching what the film is offering, whether it’s animation or live-action, I need to watch. I like to see what’s happened on the set, how the actors move, how they react and interact. The beauty of the production side always is that they’re so inspiring. I’m often asked where my inspiration comes. It doesn’t come from sitting watching a tree. It may come from sitting watching a piece that I’m working on and the beauty of it.

Once you had seen the film, what was your process in composing the score? I know you used only wooden instruments for it.

Well, I’ve always tried to find some concept for [a film] that I’m working on. What can be different from this film to the previous and the next, and by combining instruments or sounds, you can create the sound of a film. [In] The Girl With the Pearl Earring, all the instruments were almost muted. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, it was just a little instruments, these little tiny little things. And Pinocchio, I thought, you know, Geppetto is a woodworker. From the start, it’s about the trees, so let’s just challenge that and see how it goes and what comes up.

How involved was Guillermo in the score? Did he give you some guidance or did he let you have free rein?

Well, Guillermo wrote most of the songs with me, because he’s the one who put the seed on almost all the songs about the emotion that we had to convey. And for the score, I think the first thing I played was the main theme, which is the opening the film. I played it on piano to him, and I think he was moved, and I felt, if Guillermo is moved, I must be in the right zone. So that’s where we started. And the great thing about this film is that it’s never childish or childlike; it is so deep and not just playing for just kids. It’s playing for everyone. I would say for human beings, you know, because there’s a lot of soul in the story of Pinocchio and what Guillermo made is even more soulful. Of course, the father-and-son relationship, which for boys rings a bell all the time, especially when you’ve lost your father. It means a lot, and talking about inspiration, you go down there and try to link your emotions [that are] often present with what Guillermo was asking to you. And, of course, there’s many twists and turns in the film, adventures that we know about from the book, so there’s a great, great palette of colors, and musical colors to explore. But I think the real key to it was always the emotion trying to keep the vibrant heart of Pinocchio beating and make sure that we always feel this innocence that he has. He doesn’t know anything about anything. But he believes in everything. He’s so open-minded. That’s the beautiful thing about Pinocchio.

How long did the composition take for the film, and was that more or less on par with your previous projects?

I never do two projects at a time. I would say altogether with the recordings maybe two months or something. But the great thing that we managed to do with Guillermo is to interweave the melody of the songs into the score. So there’s many new melodies of course in the score that I wrote that I managed to… I didn’t want the songs to be chapters that just vanished. You hear a song and then it goes away. No, all the songs come back as instrumental motif through this score. They come back in many, many forms, different forms, shapes, tones, [tempo], and I think it gives the whole film continuity that would have been different if we would not have used the melody of the songs. Luckily enough, I’d written the music of the songs so all that was very organic.

I know that the film is based on the Italian novel and not the Disney version, but many will draw parallels to the Disney one, which won best score and best song at the 1941 Oscars, and “When I Wish Upon a Star” has become Disney’s anthem. Was there pressure to match those accolades?

There’s always a little bell ringing saying, “There’s been very good movies done before you arrived on Earth and [people] composed extraordinary music when you come near these kind of projects. You have quite a challenge in front of you.” But knowing that Guillermo started from quality and knowing that Disney… I mean, [Walt] Disney changed the stories of all the fairytales, he made them his own stories, and Guillermo was starting from the original and bringing it into his own world using great social and political content. Having environmental fascism in the 1930s, it creates really different voices, different strong elements that I can refer to and again, the tension that it creates. Of course there’s pressure being good when you go near the Sherman brothers or any other of these incredible composers. You try to be the best that you can.

What were your influences?

There are no influences for me. I don’t listen to anything. And if I need to connect to something, it might be something that I know. What were Italians listening in the ’20s and ’30s? They were listening to opera, to Caruso, to Puccini, and there was a lot on radio because it was the beginning of radio. There was a lot of military kind of music because Italy had colonies in Libya and Ethiopia. So I know what type of music they were playing at the time. But that’s not what we wanted to do. We also kept away from any anachronism. We didn’t want to write pop songs: It could have been just wrong, it would have have killed the beauty of what is on screen. It just seemed inappropriate.

Did you see similarities in working on The Shape of Water and Pinocchio?

There are! Again, the social and the political contents are very strong. So that’s for sure. The second thing is that Guillermo loves music, so it was a huge opportunity for me because I knew that he personally wanted me to push the boundaries and that the music will be shining. It was the same passion of work with Guillermo as for The Shape of Water.

What was it like creating original songs with Guillermo?

It was a first for us, and when you work with Guillermo and his endless desire and a smile on his face, that shows that he’s excited about the idea that we can create something. He’s a creator. He likes to create creatures, like in The Shape of Water, but it’s the same with writing the song or writing music, is creating the creature that you send out the window to the world. So this process with him is very, very… Lots of fun. Lots of work, but lots of fun. Guillermo and Katz, the three of us really, I think, nailed what the movie was calling for, which is, you know, define the characters and expand the emotion that they convey. Could it be fear? Could it be melancholia?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.