In the past ten years, Hans Zimmer has been the most commercially succesful film composer working in Hollywood. Other composers who join the exclusive club of composers who worked on films grossing over 2.5 billion dollars in the USA during the first decade of the new millennium are John Powell, John Debney, Danny Elfman, John Williams, James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri. MovieScore Magazine has made an exclusive analysis of the US box office figures 2000-2009 and brings you the list of the top-100 most succesful film composers in the US.

If you look at the facts and figures, it is clear that no one really comes close to Hans Zimmer, the 52-year old German who first got his big break in Hollywood with Rain Man in the late 1980s, established a new template for action film scoring with Backdraft, Crimson Tide and The Rock, influenced romantic comedy scoring with the highly popular As Good As It Gets and won the Oscar for The Lion King. The films he has composed the music for in the past ten years grossed over $4.6 billions at the US box office, averaging over $140 millions per film. Among the most popular of his blockbusters are The Dark Knight (co-scored with James Newton Howard), the Pirates of the Caribbean films and The Da Vinci Code. If you add the numerous films where Zimmer acted as the producer of the music, overseeing and supervising the scoring of films executed by other composers (for instance Henry Jackman’s Monsters vs Aliens and Ramin Djawadi’s Iron Man), we get close to $6 billions.

“I think Hans’ success is his ability to integrate a ‘rock’ sound into a more traditional orchestral sense of melody. It keeps his style vibrant, and current, less ‘film music’ than a new pop-oriented animal as it were!” says Daniel Schweiger, a music editor and film music journalist who has followed Zimmer’s career closely.

Bob Badami, who has been a music supervisor on about a dozen of Zimmer’s films, says to MovieScore Magazine that Zimmer is “the ultimate collaborator and his genius lies in his search for unique ways to solve the challenge of each new project. He’s constantly reinventing himself but his methodology remains constant and is perfect for the ways that movies are made today.”

In the past decade, Zimmer has worked with some of Hollywood’s most prominent directors, including Ridley Scott, Ron Howard and Christopher Nolan. Filmmakers who worked with Zimmer often point out how collaborative and easy-going the composer is. Guy Ritchie, who recently worked with him for the first time on Sherlock Holmes, said in an interview with IESB: “He was tremendously creative, very collaborative and extremely enthusiastic, and the chap has something of a small ego, which made the whole process tremendously easy.”

Box office figures, of course, is not the only way to measure the success of film composers. This article will be followed by another top-100 list where we look at the composers listed here in a different, more “quality” orientated way.

Following is MovieScore Magazine’s list of the top-100 composers at the US box office 2000-2009. Please note that only films grossing over $1 million has been included in the analysis and that films with more than one person officially credited as the main composers has had the total US gross split evenly between them (for instance, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard gets 50% each of the Dark Knight and Batman Begins gross).

1. HANS ZIMMER – $3897m.
   Top-5 films: The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, The Da Vinci Code, Mission: Impossible II.
   Even after we calculated the box office figures so that the total gross for a film is split between the composers if there was more than one doing the score (for instance, Zimmer co-scored The Dark Knight and Batman Begins with James Newton Howard and Kung Fu Panda with John Powell), Zimmer is still at the top of the list. His prolific output has been very versatile, ranging from big action epics to lighweight romantic comedies. There is no abundance of heavy-weight dramas in Zimmer’s filmography though – Zimmer works on big blockbuster entertainment and that is, of course, also where the big money is.
2. JOHN POWELL – $3245m.
   Top-5 films: Shrek, X-Men: The Last Stand, Hancock, The Bourne Ultimatum, Kung Fu Panda.
   Interestingly, a former Zimmer “protege” is the second most succesful composer of the first decade. Powell began his decade co-scoring a couple of highly succesful pictures with Harry Gregson-Williams (Chicken Run and Shrek) and The Road to El Dorado with Zimmer, and then went on to compose solo on the majority of his films. His scores for the Bourne films have been very influential in terms of action film scoring recently, but he has also been very prolific patricularly in animation (two Ice Age movies, Bolt, Happy Feet and Horton Hears a Who, for instance).
3. JOHN DEBNEY – $2820m.
   Top-5 films: The Passion of the Christ, Bruce Almighty, Elf, Chicken Little, The Pacifier.
   John Debney reaches third place on this list much thanks to the sheer amount of films he’s worked on – he had 45 films that grossed more than a million dollars during the ten year period, a score unmatched by anyone on this list. Interestingly, the highest grossing film he scored was also the one that stood out in terms of critical acclaim: Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Otherwise, Debney’s filmography is, to a high extent, dominated by comedies, some of them very succesful at the box office.
4. DANNY ELFMAN – $2737m.
   Top-5 films: Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Men in Black II, Planet of the Apes.
   Danny Elfman’s output in the past ten years has been focused on big action movies and the first two Spider-Man movies alone grossed $777m. and are the two most succesful films in Elfman’s 25-year film scoring career. Of the four Tim Burton films he scored Charlie and the Chocalate Factory was the highest grossing one. The composer has been on the A-list since the early 1990s and remains one the most sought-after composers in the business and one who is considered to have the most personal style.
5. JOHN WILLIAMS – $2609m.
   Top-5 films: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
   The only true veteran among the top composers on this list, 77-year old John Williams has (quite logically) slowed down a little bit in terms of the number of films he has scored in the past ten years (14 films as opposed to 20 in the 1990s). Now, if you look at the average box office receipts for his films, he still is at the top of the game with $186m per film (compare that, for instance, with Debney’s $63m. per film). Williams’ Star Wars and Harry Potter projects have of course been extremely succesful, while most of the dramas he has scored has only grossed average results at the box office.
   
6. JAMES NEWTON HOWARD – $2608m.
   Top-5 films: The Dark Knight, I Am Legend, Signs, King Kong, Batman Begins.
   Two collaborations with Hans Zimmer on Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, a frenzied replacement score for Peter Jackson and a number of acclaimed contributions to the films of M. Night Shyamalan made the past decade the most succesful so far in James Newton Howard’s 25-year long film career. Comedies and dramas has provided balance to Howard’s filmography, but most of those have been mildly succesful (2009’s Confessions of a Shopaholic and Duplicity are two examples).
   
7. ALAN SILVESTRI – $2505m.
   Top-5 films: Night at the Museum, Cast Away, The Mummy Returns, What Women Want, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
   Silvestri’s impressive 25-year collaboration with Robert Zemeckis resulted in a number of hits (Cast Away, The Polar Express and the current A Christmas Carol), but it’s a couple of his other films that took him to the top-10 of the box office between 2000 and 2009. Both Night at the Museum grossed over $400m. together, and action films such as The Mummy Returns and G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra also added to the success.
   
8. HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS – $2246m.
   Top-5 films: Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Shrek, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
   As the list above suggests, without the immensely succesful Shrek franchise, Gregson-Williams would not be where he is, at least not on this list. His top-grossing films are mostly animated films or fantasy adventures, with the occasional urban action thriller popping up here and there. His frequent collaborations with director Tony Scott have been solid in terms of their results at the box-office, but they’ve never reached the level of their first film together, 1998’s Enemy of the State.
9. DAVID NEWMAN – $1751m.
   Top-5 films: Ice Age, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Scooby-Doo, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Dr. Dolittle 2.
   It might be considered a surprise that David Newman is among the top-10 on this list while his brother, Thomas, isn’t. The reason is simple, though – David scored many more films in the past decade, to be precise 24 as opposed to Thomas’ 14. David has scored a number of highly succesful comedies (he’s probably the most typecast of the composers in the top-10) including the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks which grossed over $150m. alone during the holidays.
10. CHRISTOPHE BECK – $1746m.
    Top-5 films: The Hangover, Cheaper by the Dozen, American Wedding, The Pink Panther, What Happens in Vegas.
    A case similar to David Newman, Christophe Beck has been working on a large number of succesful comedies in the past decade – but unlike Newman, Beck is also scoring a number of heavy action movies (such as The Seeker: The Dark is Rising and Elektra), but few of them comes close to the box office receipts generated by comedies like The Hangover and The Pink Panther.
    
    Rest of composers listed with their top-3 box-office successes 2000-2009:
    
11. Howard Shore (The Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) – $1704m.
12. James Horner (Avatar, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Perfect Storm) – $1667m.
13. Trevor Rabin (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, National Secret, Bad Boys II) – $1651m.
14. Theodore Shapiro (Marley & Me, The Devil Wears Prada, Blades of Glory) – $1395m.
15. Michael Giacchino (Up, The Incredibles, Star Trek) – $1368m.
16. Aaron Zigman (The Proposal, Sex and the City, Madea Goes to Jail) – $1298m.
17. Rolfe Kent (Wedding Crashers, Freaky Friday, Legally Blonde) – $1262m.
18. Marco Beltrami (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I Robot, Live Free or Die Hard) – $1250m.
19. Randy Newman (Meet the Fockers, Monsters Inc, Cars) – $1182m.
20. Thomas Newman (Finding Nemo, Wall-E, The Green Mile) – $1180m.
21. Christopher Young (Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, The Grudge) – $1166m.
22. John Ottman (X2, Superman Returns, Fantastic Four) – $1091m.
23. Teddy Castellucci (Wild Hogs, The Longest Yard, Anger Management) – $1087m.
24. David Arnold (Quantum of Solace, Casino Royale, Die Another Day)- $1086m
25. Mark Isham (Save the Last Dance, Eight Below, Miracle) – $1052m.
26. Graeme Revell (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Daredevil, Pineapple Express) – $1051m.
27. Steve Jablonsky (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) – $1033m.
28. Ed Shearmur (Charlie’s Angels, Miss Congeniality, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle) – $953m.
29. Carter Burwell (The Blind Side, Twilight, Where the Wild Things Are) – $917m.
30. Alexandre Desplat (New Moon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Julie & Julia) – $879m.
31. Rupert Gregson-Williams (Over the Hedge, Click, Bee Movie) – $855m.
32. Brian Tyler (Fast & Furious, Eagle Eye, Rambo) – $844m.
33. Randy Edelman (xXx, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, 27 Dresses) – $770m.
34. Tyler Bates (300, Watchmen, The Day the Earth Stood Still) – $750m.
35. Klaus Badelt (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Constantine, Poseidon) – $746m.
36. George S. Clinton (Austin Powers: Goldmember, The Santa Clause 2, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause) – $721m.
37. Patrick Doyle (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Eragon, Bridget Jones’ Diary) – $671m.
38. Nicholas Hooper (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Heart of Me) – $594m.
39. Mark Mothersbaugh (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, Herbie Fully Loaded) – $583m.
40. George Fenton (Hitch, Sweet Home Alabama, Fool’s Gold) – $558m.
41. Craig Armstrong (The Incredible Hulk, Ray, World Trade Center) – $552m.
42. Ramin Djawadi (Iron Man, Open Season, Blade: Trinity) – $548m.
43. Don Davis (The Matrix Reloaded, Jurassic Park III, The Matrix Revolutions) – $544m.
44. Lalo Schifrin (Rush Hour 2, Rush Hour 3, Bringing Down the House) – $527m.
45. Richard Gibbs (Big Momma’s House, Barbershop 2: Back in Business, Like Mike) – $524m.
46. Charlie Clouser (Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV) $476m.
47. Mychael Danna (The Time Traveler’s Wife, Little Miss Sunshine, Surf’s Up) – $464m.
48. David Holmes (Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Thirteen) – $458m.
49. David Kitay (Scary Movie, Bad Santa, Date Movie) – $442m.
50. Alex Wurman (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Four Christmases, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) – $413m.
51. Lyle Workman (Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Yes Man) – $411m.
52. Rachel Portman (Chocolat, The Manchurian Candidate, Mona Lisa Smile) – $409m.
53. James L. Venable (Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, Zack and Miri Make a Porno) – $402m.
54. John Murphy (Snatch, 28 Days Later, Sunshine) – $400m.
55. Marc Shaiman (Hairspray, The Bucket List, The Kid) – $366m.
56. Mark Mancina (Brother Bear, Training Day, Haunted Mansion) – $350m.
57. Jerry Goldsmith (The Sum of All Fears, Along Came a Spider, Hollow Man) – $348m. *
58. Terence Blanchard (Inside Man, Barbershop, Next Friday) – $335m.
59. Paul Haslinger (Underworld, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Prom Night) – $334m.
60. Waddy Wachtel (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, The Benchwarmers, The House Bunny) – $314m.
61. Harald Kloser (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, 10000 BC) – $302m.
62. Elliot Goldenthal (S.W.A.T., Public Enemies, Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within) – $300m.
63. Jon Brion (The Break-Up, Step Brothers, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) – $287m.
64. Dario Marianelli (V for Vendetta, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) – $284m.
65. Michael Kamen (X-Men, Open Range, Frequency) – $275m. **
66. Gabriel Yared (Could Mountain, 1408, Shall We Dance) – $274m.
67. Clint Mansell (Sahara, Smokin’ Aces, Definitely Maybe) – $274m.
68. A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire, Couples Retreat, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) – $272m.
69. BT (The Fast and the Furious, Monster, Driven) – $265m.
70. David Lawrence (American Pie 2, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Van Wilder) – $257m.
71. Nathan Barr (The Dukes of Hazzard, Hostel, Shutter) – $241m.
72. Alan Menken (Enchanted, The Shaggy Dog, Home on the Range) – $239m.
73. Thomas Wander (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, 10000 BC) -$221m.
74. Marcus Miller (This Christmas, Head of State, The Brother) – $213m.
75. Heitor Pereira (Beverly Hills Chihuahua, It’s Complicated, Curious George) – $204m.
76. John Frizzell (Thirteen Ghosts, Cradle 2 the Grave, Ghost Ship) – $201m.
77. Philip Glass (Secret Window, No Reservations, The Hours) – $200m.
78. Stanley Clarke (Romeo Must Die, Undercover Brother, First Sunday) – $199m.
79. Henry Jackman (Monsters vs. Aliens) – $198m.
80. Trevor Jones (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Crossroads, Thirteen Days) – $194m.
81. Erran Baron Cohen (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brüno) – $189m.
82. William Ross (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ladder 49, The Tale of Despereaux) – $186m.
83. Kyle Eastwood / Michael Stevens (Gran Torino, Invictus, Letters from Iwo Jima) – $185m.
84. Craig Wedren (The School of Rock, Role Models, Reno 911! Miami) – $184m.
85. Andrea Guerra (The Pursuit of Happyness, Hotel Rwanda, Nine) – $183m.
86. Tan Dun (Chrouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero) – $182m.
87. Joel McNeely (Holes, Return to Never Land, The Jungle Book 2) – $178m.
88. Cliff Eidelman (He’s Just Not That Into You, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) – $178m.
89. T. Bone Burnett (Walk the Line, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, O Brother Where Art Thou?) – $178m.
90. Shirley Walker (Final Destination 3, Final Destination, Final Destination 2) – $177m. ***
91. Marc Streitenfeld (American Gangster, Body of Lies, A Good Year) – $177m.
92. Gustavo Santaolalla (Brokeback Mountain, Babel, North Country) – $174m.
93. David Julyan (Insomnia, The Prestige, The Descent) – $172m.
94. Geoff Zanelli (Secret Window, Hitman, Gamer) – $167m.
95. Lisa Gerrard (Gladiator, Ali, Tears of the Sun) – $167m.
96. Cliff Martinez (Traffic, Solaris, Wicker Park) -163m.
97. tomandandy (The Strangers, The Hills Have Eyes, The Mothman Prophecies) – $163m.
98. Nancy Wilson(Vanilla Sky, Almost Famous, Elizabethtown) – $160m.
99. David Sardy (21, Zombieland) – $157m.
100. Nathaniel Mechaly (Taken, Ushpizin, Revolver) – $146m.

US box office statistics up until Jan 1, 2010, courtesy of the Internet Movie Database. *) Composer died in 2004, **) Composer died in 2003, ***) Composer died in 2006.