Metallica is set to write an orchestral version of their classic “Nothing Else Matters” for Disney’s upcoming Jungle Cruise film according to Loudwire.
With now several collaborative performances with the San Francisco Symphony it is not surprising to hear that the band is remaking the somber Stairway-to-Heaven-like ballad. Drummer Lars Ulrich was the first to break the news about working with Disney production president Sean Bailey and Grammy and Emmy winning film composer James Newton Howard. Bailey, an apparent lifelong rock fan, and Ulrich, who’s family is big into Disney, made the mashup a perfect synergistic fit.
“I think he’s always been a Metallica fan, and we’ve gotten to know each other well. My wife and I are big Disney fans, so there’s a great friendship there,” Ulrich said about Bailey in an interview with Collider. “He’s always looked for the right match where there was a way that Metallica could contribute to some project of theirs. This was the right fit, with Sean leading the calvary, and with James Newton Howard and his track record, and what he’s done.”
Howard has not only won a Grammy and an Emmy but also been nominated for an Oscar eight times as well. His resume is an impressive one having worked on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, alongside Hans Zimmer, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and has scored the last nine of M. Night Shyamalan’s films. The acclaimed composer has also worked on The Hunger Games series, the Fantastic Beasts series, and many ’90s and early 2000’s Disney movies including Space Jam.
“James Newton Howard, the man, the myth, the absolute legend!” Ulrich exclaimed. “Considering what’s he’s done, it’s an absolute honor to have done this with him, and we’re excited for the world to hear it.”
Jungle Cruise will star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily Blunt in a live-action film about the famous Disneyland ride. The story will feature some of the many obstacles famous on the ride, though the plot will revolve around the pair searching for the Tree of Life.
The rearranged piece will apparently come at a pivotal part of the film though Ulrich was loose on the details.
“It’s kind of an interesting morph because it’s kind of — and I don’t want to give too much of it away — but it’s a very unusual morph in that it’s kind of his arrangement of ‘Nothing Else Matters’ that we’re playing. We wrote the song, but he took the song and rearranged it to fit something specific in the film — and obviously, I’m not going to give any of that away — but we then kind of took on his version of it. I think that’s all that should be said.”
Jungle Cruise is set to release on July 30, 2021.