Klaus Badelt

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Klaus Badelt Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1968 is a German composer, best known for composing film scores. Badelt started his musical career composing many very successful movies and commercials in his homeland. In 1998, Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer invited Klaus to come work at Media Ventures in Santa Monica, his studio co-owned by Jay Rifkin. Since then, Klaus has been working on a number of his own film and television projects such as The Time Machine and K-19: The Widowmaker. He has also collaborated with other Media Ventures composers, such as Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, and Zimmer.

While collaborating with Zimmer, Klaus has contributed to the Oscar-nominated scores for The Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt, as well as writing music for many well known directors including Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Terrence Mallick, John Woo, Kathryn Bigelow, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Gore Verbinski, and Steven Spielberg. Klaus co-produced the score to Hollywood Box office hit Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, as well as writing portions of the score with singer/composer Lisa Gerrard. Having contributed music to Gladiator, Mission: Impossible 2 and Michael Kamen's score for X-Men, Klaus was involved in the three most successful movies in 2000. Klaus also collaborated with Zimmer on other successful titles, such as The Pledge, and 2001 blockbusters Hannibal and Pearl Harbor.

Klaus Badelt scored Dreamworks' remake of the classic The Time Machine, which earned him the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards 2003. He has scored dozens of movies including K-19: The Widowmaker, The Recruit, and the Australian biopic Ned Kelly.

Arguably Klaus’ most famous work to the general public is Disney’s hugely successful Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Badelt's work on the film is notable not only for its popular success, but for how quickly the score came together. After director Gore Verbinski fired veteran composer Alan Silvestri, Badelt and the Media Ventures team was brought in for a replacement score. Badelt served as "music supervisor" and worked with seven other composers from Media Ventures (Ramin Djawadi, James Dooley, Nick Glennie-Smith, Steve Jablonsky, Blake Neely, James McKee Smith, and Geoff Zanelli) to produce the score.