Trent Reznor has reactivated Nine Inch Nails for a new project, and says that he and bandmate Atticus Ross are “ready to be back in the driver’s seat.”
Reznor and Ross, as Nine Inch Nails, are currently working on the score for TRON: Ares, the third instalment of the sci-fi film series, set for release in October 2025.
The pair are now among the most respected, and most acclaimed, film soundtrack composers of the modern era, having won two Oscars (Best Original Score for 2010's The Social Network and 2020's Soul), in addition to a host of Baftas, Grammys, Golden Globe Awards and Emmy Awards for their impressive catalogue, and in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reznor says, “Scoring has provided a way for me to feel vital, to feel challenged.”
“Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been a bit disillusioned by popular music,” Reznor says. “As I get older, some things feel less relatable to me. The business sucks. The way people consume music is not as inspiring as it used to be, it’s marginalized in a lot of ways. Scoring has provided a way for me to feel vital, to feel challenged.”
Reznor goes on to admit that he initially considered the idea of scoring film “terrifying”, but says that working with director David Fincher on The Social Network taught him and Ross important lessons.
“We could still be us,” says Reznor, “and we could still apply the same things we would do writing a song, just shifting around how we look at it - where the script and the vision of the director and the scene and setting are the lyrics, and we could take our arrangement skills and the same things that we tap into emotionally in Nine Inch Nails into another setting. But it took a minute for us to understand that, a few months of waking up at 4 in the morning and sweating about, What did we get ourselves into?”
Reznor says that having worked on seven film scores since the last NIN album emerged, he's ready to return to making music for the band.
“We’re taking the inspiration we’ve garnered and funneling it into a Nine Inch Nails project, which we’re working on now,” he says. “We’re ready to be back in the driver’s seat.”
