biography
James Hannigan is a BAFTA Award-winning composer, producer, sound designer, and conference founder - with credits spanning multi-million-selling video games, film, television and audio drama. Noted for his lyrical and emotive scores, his work includes entries in some of the world’s best-known game franchises, among them the Harry Potter, Dead Space, Evil Genius, RuneScape, Warhammer, FIFA, F1, Transformers and Command & Conquer series, as well as several Wing Commander spin-offs and various titles in Theme Park, Art Academy, The Lord of the Rings, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs series. | LISTEN
Among his credits are some of the most listened-to audiobooks and audio dramas in streaming history - from the Stephen Fry-read Harry Potter audiobooks and Terry Pratchett's Discworld, to the full-cast, New York Times #1 bestselling audio drama series The Sandman (DC), the Audie Award-winning Alien series, and Kingdom Come (DC).
His other awards include a Webby People’s Choice Award for The Sandman: Act II (featuring James McAvoy, Regé-Jean Page and Michael Sheen), and an IFMCA Award for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (EA/WB) - which also earned a BAFTA nomination for Original Music in 2010. Across his career, his scores have attracted four additional BAFTA nominations, and his tracks – such as the parodic cult favourite Red Alert 3 Theme: Soviet March – have been streamed hundreds of millions of times worldwide. Many of his scores have been recorded with world-class orchestras, including The Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra - at legendary studios such as Abbey Road, Air-Lyndhurst and Skywalker Ranch.
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Credits include The Sandman Act III (featuring the Song of Orpheus), Steelrising, Primeval (ITV/BBC America), Reign of Fire, Catwoman, titles in the EA Sports, Grand Prix and Space Hulk series, Nintendo’s Art Academy (with music featured in the Super Smash Bros. series), Terraria: Otherworld, Red Alert 3 (with Tim Curry and J.K. Simmons); 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/WBIE); Dead Space 3, Command & Conquer 4, Call of Antia, Sim Theme Park, Microsoft's Freelancer, Privateer 2: The Darkening, The BAFTA-Nominated Evil Genius, Evil Genius 2, and Transformers Universe.
Tracks from his catalogue are often heard in TV series, ranging from Top Gear and The Grand Tour to Disney shorts, Emily in Paris, Saturday Night Live, SpongeBob SquarePants, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, Dance Moms, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tour of Houses and Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts - to name only a few.
Between 2013 and 2020, Hannigan co-founded and organised the influential Southbank-based conference series Game Music Connect and Screen Music Connect - held in partnership with Playstation, BAFTA, the Ivors Academy, PRS For Music, Classic FM, Music Week, Electronic Arts and others | SCREEN ART CONNECT
He has also written for outlets including Classic FM, DEVELOP (authoring its first ever audio-related cover feature), and Pixel Addict, exploring topics such as the role of music in games and film, and the growing impact of AI Music and the Arts. | ARTICLES | INTERVIEWS
An occasional speaker and panelist at Comic-Con and other events, he has been interviewed by BBC Radio, Classic FM, Sky TV, IGN, Forbes and MusicRadar, and has talked at institutions such as The Royal College of Music, The School of Sound, EIGF, Musicworks, Ludomusicology and the DEVELOP Conference - and, in 2012, was a subject of BAFTA’s Conversations with Composers series at the Royal Albert Hall.
Additional credits include BBC Radio 4 productions of Good Omens and Neverwhere - and, perhaps more relevant for retro gaming enthusiasts - his early projects include Privateer 2: The Darkening (with Christopher Walken, Clive Owen and John Hurt), Freelancer, Conquest, Brute Force, Theme Park World (aka Sim Theme Park), F1 2000, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat, Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, Theme Park Inc. (aka Theme Coaster), Flight of the Amazon Queen, Cutthroat Island and more.
From his early years at Electronic Arts to his time at Pinewood Studios in London working across media industries, Hannigan helped to devise pioneering music systems for interactive entertainment, used in titles such as the BAFTA-winning Theme Park World (Bullfrog Productions) and the BAFTA-nominated Republic: The Revolution (created by Elixir Studios under Demis Hassabis, now co-founder of Google DeepMind). His early work also includes sound design for productions such as the Golden Reel-nominated Lost in Space.
To listen to more of James Hannigan's music for the Harry Potter game series, click here.
James Hannigan doesn't use social media