Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer worked over FaceTime with a socially distanced choir to create a new cover of the Pink Floyd song “Eclipse” for the recently released trailer of the sci-fi epic “Dune.”
According to a report from Variety, the trailer’s version of the song ― which originally appeared on Pink Floyd’s 1973 album, “Dark Side of the Moon” ― was sung by 32 people in Los Angeles who assembled four at a time during eight summer sessions. They were guided by Zimmer’s choral contractor, Edie Lehmann Boddicker, and Zimmer supervised the elaborate process from his home studio via FaceTime.
Assembling groups in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic added extra quirks to the creative process, Lehmann Boddicker told Variety.
“We followed all the protocols,” Lehmann Boddicker said. “Everybody wore masks except when they were in their separate cubicles, divided by glass, all with their own mics, and everything was wiped down between sessions.”
The song’s inclusion carries special meaning for “Dune” fans who know that Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky approached Pink Floyd to compose the score for his unfinished 1970s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel, published in 1965.
“The group at that time had such success that almost all regarded that as an unrealizable idea,” Jodorowsky wrote in an article describing his ambitions for the film, saying he approached Pink Floyd, which was in the midst of recording “Dark Side of the Moon.”
Jodorowsky’s take on “Dune” ― which was intended to include an astounding cast featuring Orson Welles and artist Salvadore Dalí ― ultimately never found adequate funding, but in a full-circle phenomenon, Pink Floyd has found itself associated again with the epic space opera more than four decades later.
This version of Frank Herbert’s tale of intergalactic forces battling over the desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, is directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who previously directed “Blade Runner 2049.”
While Villeneuve’s vision for “Dune” doesn’t feature Salvadore Dalí, it still showcases a star-studded cast, including Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.