When I attended Coachella in 2017, I met the inclusion of Hans Zimmer with some skepticism. Not because I wasn’t excited to see such a bold choice on the lineup – but because I was worried it wouldn’t work with that sort of festival crowd.
That all changed the moment I saw Lebo M join Hans on stage to perform the iconic opening vocals from The Lion King. The entire crowd lost their minds. Many were openly weeping, with a look of bewilderment. I don’t think they weren’t expecting the music to hit that hard. I’m sure some chemicals were only adding to the emotional experience, but that’s besides the point.
The point is: Composers really do work at festivals. And Coachella themselves know this, repeating the feat with Danny Elfman in 2022, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Gustavo Dudamel, in 2025.
And it seems that Nine Inch Nails members and Oscar-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross know this too. Because next month, the very first festival dedicated to composers for the screen – Future Ruins Music & Arts Festival – is coming to Los Angeles. Behind it are Reznor and Ross, and the epic lineup they have assembled includes the mentioned Elfman, plus the likes of Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, The Roots’ Questlove, Hauschka, Hildur Guðnadóttir and many more.
The official website sums up the event this way:
Future Ruins is a first-of-its-kind music festival: a day-long event where the world’s most influential film and television composers step out from behind the screen and onto the stage.
Set across three stages at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, Future Ruins is designed to feel thoughtful and immersive, bringing this music to light in an environment where it has never been heard before. Every artist is a headliner, each with their own specially curated moment. Each artist is encouraged to take big swings and reimagine their work for a live audience. Ranging from electronic sets and live bands to orchestral performances, fans have the chance to experience live debuts from composers who rarely appear onstage.
This one-time line up is not just a music festival — it’s a cinematic ceremony, a deep dive into sound and story, and a historic first for Los Angeles.
And here’s what the full lineup looks like, in alphabetical order, accompanied by their most well known scores.
Cristobal Tapia de Veer
Babygirl, Smile, The White Lotus, Black Mirror, Utopia (UK), Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, Ponyboi, The Third Day, National Treasure (UK),The Girl With All The Gifts, Humans.
Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow
Ex Machina, Civil War, Men, Drokk, Annihilation, Luce, Free Fire, Black Mirror, Devs.
Danny Elfman
Batman, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Men in Black, Good Will Hunting, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Big Fish, Alice In Wonderland, Spider-Man, Milk.
Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin
Suspiria, Profondo Rosso/Deep Red, Dawn of the Dead, Demons, Tenebrae, Phenomena, Opera.
Hildur Guðnadóttir
Joker, Chernobyl, A Haunting in Venice, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Mary Magdalene, Tár, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Women Talking, Hedda.
A performance of Howard Shore‘s score of David Cronenberg’s Crash.
Isobel Waller-Bridge
Munich: The Edge of War, Emma., Black Mirror, I Came By, Wicked Little Letters, Fleabag, The Lesson, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Magpie, Sweetpea.
John Carpenter
Halloween, They Live, The Thing, Christine, Escape From New York.
Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
Stranger Things, Lost in the Night, The Hole in the Fence, Spheres, Native Son, Butterfly, Retaliators, Valley of the Boom.
Mark Mothersbaugh
The Life Aquatic, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Rugrats, The Lego Movie, A Minecraft Movie, Cocaine Bear, Thor: Ragnarok.
Questlove performing the score works of Curtis Mayfield.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Candyman, Master, Telemarketers, The Color of Care, Grasshopper Republic, Power, Unvion, Seeds, Life After.
Tamar-kali
Mudbound, Shirley, The Assistant, The Fire Inside, The Last Thing He Wanted, Come Sunday, Palmer, The Lie, Little Richard: I am Everything.
Terence Blanchard
BlacKkKlansman, Malcolm X, Inside Man, Da 5 Bloods, When the Levees Broke, One Night in Miami, The Woman King, Perry Mason.
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
The Social Network, Watchmen, Gone Girl, Soul, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Challengers, Empire of Light, Waves, The Vietnam War, Mank, The Killer.
Volker Bertelmann AKA Hauschka
All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave, Lion, The Amateur, Dune: Prophecy, The Day of the Jackal, Hollywoodgate, Adrift, War Sailor, The Old Guard, Stowaway, Patrick Melrose.
The festival is taking place just outside of Hollywood at the grounds of The Los Angeles Equestrian Center, across three stages, for one day only. Saturday, 8th November 2025.
VIP tickets are sold out, but GA tickets remain for about US$299, and there’s also GA+ tickets (because that’s a thing now!) for US$399.
For those tickets, and more details, head to futureruins.com.
Featured photo taken from the recent Nine Inch Nails tour, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross featured. Photo by the author.
