James Horner Wrote a Secret Score for Antoine Fuqua’s ‘The Magnificent Seven’

James Horner tragically passed away last month, leaving behind an incredible legacy of scores for films like Titanic, Aliens and A Beautiful Mind. Although we previously believed the composer’s final score was for Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw, the director has revealed that Horner left behind a wonderful gift, secretly writing and composing a score for Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven.

In addition to scoring Southpaw, Horner also wrote the score for the Chilean miner drama The 33. We thought those would be the final scores from the late, iconic composer, but in a new interview with NPR (via Movies.com), Fuqua reveals that Horner wrote one more. While sharing a lovely remembrance of the composer, Fuqua also shared Horner’s last gift to the director:

James was an incredible human being. He was a filmmaker through and through. He was one of the most gentle people I’ve ever met. Even the way he spoke was very soft and thoughtful. He was magical. He had this childlike wonderment in his eyes, but he was an amazing artist, an amazing poet. I loved him and we became friends.

 

James was a family man. He loved his children. He called me on a Saturday after he watched [Southpaw], and I said ‘I don’t have any money,; because it wasn’t a big budget movie. And he said to me. ‘I love the movie. I love the father-daughter relationship. Don’t worry about the money, I’m just going to do it.’ And he did it for nothing. He paid his crew out of his own pocket.

And I just found out a few days ago – his team flew out here, to Baton Rouge, and they brought me all the music for The Magnificent Seven. He already wrote it for me based on the script. He did it all off the script because he wanted to surprise me. I thought it was a gift or something. And they all came out here and said, ‘Antoine, James wrote the music for Magnificent Seven already and it’s just glorious.’ So that’s my memory of James.

Not only did we lose an immensely talented man, but we lost an incredibly generous one who went out of his way to share his gift, and who created art for the love it — not simply for commerce.

Unless Horner had other completed scores for future films, his work for The Magnificent Seven may have been his final finished product. We’ll hear it when The Magnificent Seven arrives in 2017.