‘Genius’ Composer Lorne Balfe Thinks Up Emmy-Nominated Theme: Deadline’s Crew Call Podcast

Much like mathematics and science was embedded in Albert Einstein at an early age, so has music for composer Lorne Balfe who by his late teens was a successful commercial jingles writer in the United Kingdom. The Scottish native eventually found himself at Hans Zimmer’s composer think thank Remote Control in Santa Monica where he worked on a variety of film and TV scores including writing additional music on such pics as The Dark Knight, Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen and Inception. Balfe’s big break came when he got to co-compose the score to Dreamworks Animation’s Megamind with Zimmer. This was soon followed by

solo composer credits on such movies as Penguins of Madagascar, Terminator Genisys and Michael Bay’s 13 Hours. Balfe wrote the episodic music to NatGeo/Fox 21’s Genius, but it was the miniseries’ main title theme that was co-composed with Zimmer which received an Emmy nomination. For both, it’s the second time they’e been recognized by the TV Academy: Balfe previously in the miniseries/movie music composition category for Sundance Channel’s Restless and Zimmer in the same category for part 10 of HBO’s Pacific. Both composers have a long-running history working with filmmaker Ron Howard (they co-wrote the score to The Dilemma), who along with his Imagine partner Brian Grazer, brought the epic story of Albert Einstein to television. Howard told us at Deadline’s contenders that Noah Pink’s script arrived on his desk from Gigi Pritzker’s OddLot Entertainment, and that along with Walter Isaacson’s book on the legendary scientist “was full of surprises” in bringing the legendary scientist’s story to television. Here, we speak with Balfe on the latest episode of Crew Call.