Although we're now a couple months into 2026, I finally present you with the "best" film scores of 2025. As usual, there are some very mainstream scores in here that most observers would agree with and there are a few left field choices. If you're a longtime listener, that shouldn't surprise you. As with all of these lists, although I say they're the "best", what I really mean is these are my favorites. Who's to say what's really the best? Surely not me.

This was a much harder list for me to put together than in recent years - there were a few scores that I immediately knew were going to make it, but a number of others where it took a lot more consideration, noticing that the passage of time had changed how I'd viewed a score (for better or worse); ultimately these lists are just a snapshot in time, but some decisions were made based on how I felt now while others were made based on how I felt in the past. It's a good reminder as to the subjectivity of each of these lists, at how you felt when seeing the film impacts your memory of it (and its score) forever on. But all things considered, I'm happy to say that 2025 was another solid year, with a deep set of great scores that stretch far beyond the same handful that received most attention during the year-end awards and recaps.

If you can't control yourself, look below to see what scores I picked, though you'll miss out on the why of it all (and given some of the choices, the why is pretty important).

Awards season is nearing its end, with the BAFTAs later today, February 22, and the Oscars coming on March 15. I'll always say that, although I'm by no means a massive fan (or detractor) of film awards, I'm always happy that it's the one time of year where film music gets to be widely celebrated. The nominee slates also provide great peaks into the state of modern, mainstream film music, and this year's selections are a great cross-section of style and approach. And of course, it gives me an excuse to talk about them a little bit, so read below then listen on.

Of the nominees, I interviewed Max Richter for Hamnet and also interviewed Jerskin Fendrix near the end of 2023 for Poor Things (which I would have swore was not that long ago...).

This year, the nominees for both sets of awards are the same:

You poor fools - imagine thinking that The Film Scorer was actually on hiatus? Far, far from the truth. Ending the fifteen second break I took after interviewing Daniel Lopatin is Simon Franglen! For those that don't know, Simon is fresh off of scoring Avatar: Fire and Ash, having already scored Avatar: The Way of Water and working with longtime collaborator James Horner on the first film. This is a much less tangential interview than normal, with essentially our whole focus revolving around Avatar: creating and expanding the palette, the scope and breadth of themes, his prior work with James Horner and carrying a core team through all three films, and, above all, making sure the boss (Jim Cameron) is happy.

Simon's score for Avatar: Fire and Ash and the rest of his music is available on all major platforms. Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently in theaters, and if we're lucky there might be a few more Avatar films on the way some day. You can find out more about Simon on his website.

Here we are, in the dead zone between seasons, where all should be silent. But a voice calls out from the darkness. Who could it be...?

Well my friends, that voice belongs to one Daniel Lopatin, also known as Oneohtrix Point Never (alongside your humble host, of course). Daniel has just scored Marty Supreme, and I can vouch that both film and score are great, certainly landing upon my top tens of the year. Unsurprisingly, then, Daniel and I spend most of the conversation talking about Marty Supreme, including musical anachronism, inspiration from sports films, and long nights spent with Josh Safdie.

Daniel's score for Marty Supreme is forthcoming (though having heard an advance version, I can vouch that it's great) and the rest of his music is available on all major platforms.

The end is here! Well, the end of season 5 at least. That's right, after over twelve months the season is finally over (making it, I think, the longest season of The Film Scorer yet), and what better wait to celebrate than to chat with Max Richter?

Max's (Ad Astra, The Leftovers) latest (Oscar nominated) score is for the incredible historical drama Hamnet, a fictionalized account of the death of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes's son Hamnet and how it inspired the creation of Hamlet. Unsurprisingly, we spend most of our conversation on Hamnet, but despite the quick interview we manage to cover a lot of other ground too, such as the use of "On the Nature of Daylight" over the years, the troubled production of Ad Astra, and how a musician's intent goes only so far once their music reaches an audience.

Max's score for Hamnet is forthcoming (though having heard an advance version, I can vouch that it's great) and the rest of his music is available on all major platforms. You can find out more about Max on his website. In addition to Hamnet's pending release, Max just announced some 2026 tour dates.

There are a few perks to running every aspect of this site and podcast, the biggest being picking who I want to interview (and avoiding whomever I don't). Part of that, sometimes, is using film music as an excuse to interview bands that I just broadly like. Enter: Chat Pile. The Oklahoma noise rock band has one score under their belt, the 2022 indie crime flick Tenkiller, which they released as a score album after their debut God's Country, and have provided some songs for other films, most recently a track for the end credits to V/H/S/Halloween. Not to mention, they routinely talk about movies, including during their gigs. All perfect hooks to have them on, and so today I'm talking with vocalist Raygun Busch and guitarist Luther Manhole.

As such, we jump around quite a bit: from their experience scoring Tenkiller, how movies brought them together and provide a mutual love, and some recent (and not to recent) scores that they've enjoyed (I'll note that at one point Ray is talking about the Bossa Nova score for Black Orpheus before getting interrupted by his dog...). We wrap up on a bit of a detour, actually talking about the economics of albums and touring, and how much a role cost of living plays into that.

Chat Pile's music is available on all major platforms, chief among them being Bandcamp, or you can seek out their music physically. You can find out more about Chat Pile on their website and they have a new album on the horizon, In The Earth Again which they've co-written with Hayden Pedigo, coming out October 31st.

Although this podcast is called "The Film Scorer", every so often it's nice to chat with someone who does significant work in another medium instead. Today, that someone is Jesper Kyd (Hitman, Assassin's Creed). Jesper has been scoring for games for over thirty years, working on some of the biggest video game franchises around. But he's also worked on a number of films (like the Indian films Tumbbad and Crazxy), leading to the best answer I've ever gotten to the question "what's the difference between scoring for video games and movies?"

Jesper's latest score is for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. In fact, Jesper has been scoring this game for years - it first came out in November 2022, and with new maps, characters, events, and other updates he keeps writing new music for it. The result is four separate releases, the latest of which was just in August of this year, about 25 minutes of dark industrial electronic music for running and gunning. I must have spent a dozen hours listening to those releases getting ready for this interview, and let me tell you: I was ready to join the 40th millennia's endless war.

Jesper's score for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Volumes 1-4), and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms. You can find out more about Jeremiah on his website.

I know I keep saying that the end of this season is imminent. And it is, but it seems like every time I think it's about dead it springs back to life for a little while longer. Reviving it this week is Jeremiah Fraites. Jeremiah is going to be best known as being one of the founding members of the hit alternative folk band The Lumineers, but lately he's expanded his horizons a bit. Specifically, Jeremiah has scored two films this fall: the Stephen King-based The Long Walk and the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. We spend most of our time talking about both scores, particularly The Long Walk (since Deliver Me from Nowhere isn't out yet), and of course that becomes a jumping off point for the conversation. We also cover things like how film has expanded music (including visualizing music as you write), getting his wife involved in the scoring process, the differences between writing original score and original songs for films (The Lumineers wrote some songs for The Hunger Games), and plenty more.

Jeremiah's score for The Long Walk, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while The Long Walk is currently in theaters while Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere hits theaters on October 24th.

Composer Jeff Danna (The Good Dinosaur, The Boondock Saints) joins me on The Film Scorer podcast just before we wrap up season 5! Oddly enough, I've listened to quite a bit of music from the Silent Hill franchise over the last 15 months or so, and it turns out that Jeff "scored" the two film adaptations from earlier in the 2000s (I used "scored" in quotes because the real story is a bit more complicated than that). So of course, I used our conversation as an excuse to ask all about Silent Hill, including why the first film never got a proper score release, and he tells me about having to re-record and re-create every single musical sound from Akira Yamaoka's game scores for the films. Quite a feat.

Of course, Jeff didn't come on the show to talk about Silent Hill movies from 15-20 years ago. Instead, we spend most of our time talking about his score for the hit Netflix series The Hunting Wives. The conversation goes from creating a unique palette for east Texas (particularly through the Croatian prim), scoring sexiness (the key is not aiming for sexy music), and plenty more. Along the way, we get pretty in-depth about what makes for a good theme, when you need to cast one aside and start over, and how thematic music requires a commitment from the composer and the director; after all, the latter has to be comfortable with a a musical commitment to their characters, as character and theme become intertwined.

Jeff's score, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while The Hunting Wives is currently streaming on Netflix. You can find out more about Jeff on his website.

In a Film Scorer first, a repeat guest joins the show! Daniel Pemberton (the Spider-Verse films, King Arthur) comes onto the show for a second time, after chatting with me back in 2023 about his score for Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Even though we're just over halfway through the year, Daniel's already scored about a half dozen projects, so we had plenty of things to talk about. With so much to pick from, we primarily talk about his recent work on the Black Mirror episode USS Callister: Into Infinity and Eddington - two extremely different projects with very different scores. Of course, even though our chat clocks in at just under half an hour we cover plenty of other ground too, including trends in modern film scoring and a big detour into Anton Karas's score for The Third Man.

Daniel's score for Eddington and Callister, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms. Eddington is still playing in select theaters and is available on demand while Callister is available on Netflix.

And if you haven't yet, be sure to check out our prior conversation here: https://thefilmscorer.com/an-interview-with-daniel-pemberton/