Child’s Play Remake Unveils Bear McCreary’s Full Opening Theme Featuring Mark Hamill
The prolific composer also used a number of unorthodox methods to put together this film’s music, including a toy orchestra.
By Chris Morse
Love it or hate it, the Child’s Play remake is fast approaching its June 21st release date and one of the highlights of the finished product will no doubt be its music, composed by The Walking Dead’s Bear McCreary. Although the composer released a little sneak preview a couple months back, we now have the full, extended theme available for you to listen to above.
This preview coincidences with the release of the official soundtrack, which you can grab up digitally from Amazon, but regarding the track itself, it’s certainly a unique one as it features Mark Hamill’s Chucky voice work in a delightfully-creepy way. The film’s score overall shares that unique quality, as McCreary explained in an interview with Consequence of Sound
“I was thrilled to have had the opportunity to work Mark Hamill in creating the ‘Child’s Play Theme,’” he commented. “He dove into the experience head first and was a joy to work with. Together, we crafted a song that became the end credits of the film; an upbeat, pleasant version of ‘The Buddi song.’ Mark is very dynamic, and was able to do both a pleasant version and an evil version of the song. These two vocal performances signify Chucky’s arc within the film, and you hear within Mark’s performance that range of character.”
“Chucky singing ‘The Buddi Song’ was a conceit of the new Child’s Play script, and Lars’ vision, and I was very excited to write this song and theme. The melody of the ‘Theme from Child’s Play’ serves two functions in the film. It’s the dramatic underscore for Chucky which supports emotion, warmth, and curiosity and also danger, menace, and murder. It’s also a piece of source music. The theme also functions as ‘The Buddi Song,’ a song that exists within the fictional world of the movie, programmed into the Buddi doll. I collaborated with screenwriter Tyler Burton Smith to craft lyrics that felt fun, upbeat, and pleasant, but could also have a sinister spin, depending on Mark Hamill’s performance.”
Another exciting part of the film’s music is that it very appropriately includes toy instruments and other unorthodox approaches, giving it a child-like feel with genuine sinister undertones. “My idea from the beginning was not to score this film using a traditional orchestra, but in fact to score it with a toy orchestra,” McCreary explained. “This ultimately involved stealing toys from my daughter’s play room and adding bizarre, handheld instruments such as toy pianos, hurdy gurdies, accordions, action figures, Slinkies, slide whistles, Otamatones, melodicas, harmonicas, kazoos, to create an orchestra of sounds.”
“When I pitched the idea to Lars, he loved it, the studio loved it, and I started working. The result is, I think, the most personal score I’ve ever created because 95% of the sounds you’re hearing are me performing on an instrument or singing. I added a string quintet, one ukulele performer, and a session with a choir in Prague, but all the rest I performed myself.”
Regardless of how you feel about Orion Pictures putting a different spin on Chucky in this remake, you have to hand it to McCreary for creating something unique and memorable with this score. Once again, you can digitally download the soundtrack on Amazon.
In Child’s Play, a mother gives her son a toy doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature. The cast includes Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Legion) as the mother, Karen, Gabriel Bateman (Light’s Out) as her son, Andy, and Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta) as Greg, a detective who will be investigating the mysterious deaths surrounding the doll. Chucky is voiced by the legendary Mark Hamill.
The film is directed by Lars Klevberg, who is known for his horror film, Polaroid, with a script penned by Quantum Break and Kung Fury 2 writer Tyler Burton Smith. KatzSmith Productions’ David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith (Stephen King's It) are on board as producers with the film slated to arrive in a couple weeks on June 21st, 2019.
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