biography
James Hannigan is a BAFTA award-winning composer, with credits spanning multi-million-selling video games, television, audio drama and other media. His work includes entries in the Harry Potter, Dead Space, Evil Genius, RuneScape, Warhammer, FIFA, F1, Transformers, and Command & Conquer VG franchises, among others — as well as several Wing Commander spin-offs and titles in The Lord of the Rings, Art Academy, Theme Park, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs series. Other notable credits include the New York Times #1 audio bestseller The Sandman (DC), the full-cast Audie Award-winning Alien series, themes for Terry Pratchett's Discworld, and the hugely popular Harry Potter series narrated by Stephen Fry - perhaps the most listened-to audiobook series in history. At the present time, James is working on two unannounced projects for DC.
Among James’s other awards are a Webby People’s Choice Award for The Sandman: Act II (with a cast including James McAvoy and Michael Sheen) and an IFMCA (International Film Music Critics Association) Award for the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video-game soundtrack, which was also BAFTA-nominated for Original Music in 2010. His themes – such as the parodic ‘Soviet March’ from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – have been streamed hundreds of millions of times, and his scores have collected four additional BAFTA nominations in the course of his career.
Credits include games in the EA Sports, Grand Prix, and Space Hulk VG series; Nintendo's Art Academy (also heard in the Super Smash Bros. series), Terraria: Otherworld, Red Alert 3 (With Tim Curry and J.K. Simmons), Primeval (ITV), Microsoft's Freelancer, Reign of Fire, Catwoman, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 &2 (EA/WB), Dead Space 3, Command and Conquer 4, and Transformers Universe. Recent projects include Steelrising, Call of Antia, Evil Genius 2, and The Sandman Act III (featuring the Song of Orpheus sung by Regé-Jean Page).
Additionally, tracks from Hannigan's back catalogue find regular use in TV productions, trailers and installations - from Top Gear and The Grand Tour to Disney shorts. He has recorded with world-class orchestras - including The Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra - at iconic studios such as Abbey Road, Air-Lyndhurst and Skywalker Ranch, and is a co-founder of several industry conferences and events, including the sold-out Game Music Connect and Screen Music Connect series - held at London’s Southbank Centre between 2013 and 2019. An occasional writer of words as well as music, he has contributed articles various books, and to media outlets such as Classic FM - including writing cover features for magazines such as DEVELOP and Pixel Addict. He's also on the social impact of AI Music and Art. | SELECTED ARTICLES
An occasional panelist at Comic-Con and talk events, Hannigan has been interviewed by BBC Radio, Classic FM, Sky TV, IGN, Forbes, Music Radar and others, and has spoken at conferences and institutions such as The School of Sound, EIGF, Musicworks, Ludomusicology, DEVELOP conference, and The Royal College of Music - and in 2012 was showcased in BAFTA’s Conversations with Composers event series at the Albert Hall. | NEWS
In his early years working with Electronic Arts, and then later from his offices at Pinewood Studios in London, Hannigan devised music systems for interactive entertainment – for titles including the BAFTA-winning Theme Park World, and the BAFTA-nominated Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius - designed by Elixir Studios and led Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis. Hannigan's early work also includes sound design for films such as the Golden Reel-Nominated, Lost in Space.
Hannigan's further credits include RuneScape: The Orchestral Collection, BBC Radio 4 adaptations of Good Omens and Neverwhere, and placements from his back catalogue can occasionally be heard in TV series such as Floor is Lava, Impractical Jokers, Emily in Paris, SpongeBob Squarepants, Saturday Night Live , The World According to Jeff Goldblum, Dance Moms, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tour of Houses, and Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts.
For fans of retro gaming, some of his earliest credits include Conquest, Brute Force, FIFA, Sim Theme Park, Freelancer, Privateer 2: The Darkening (with Christopher Walken, Clive Owen and John Hurt), Infestation, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat, Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, Theme Park Inc., FA Premier League, Cutthroat Island, Flight of the Amazon Queen, and many others.
