“The most powerful weapon is the music.”

L.A. TIMES

“… James Hannigan’s music makes The Sandman totally immersive.”

THE SUNDAY TIMES

“the best music in the series..”

MOVIE MUSIC UK – HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (VG)

“…a wonderful cinematic score”

AUDIOFILE MAGAZINE

“[Evil Genius] expertly captures the ‘60s spy-movie aesthetic”

GAME INFORMER

” a superb score by composer James Hannigan — nothing more, nothing less.”

MULTIVERSITY COMICS

“horns and violins rise to cacophony, guaranteed to get the heart pumping.”

TIME

“A score which combines musicality with wit … complementing the sound perfectly.”

BAFTA

“10/10. The music in Republic is amazing… possibly the most appropriate music ever….”

GAME FAQS

“James Hannigan has not missed a beat.”

GAMING TREND

“formidable music, sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender…”

THE TIMES

“…some of the most viscerally satisfying bombast ever produced”

GGM

“The soundtrack is particularly fantastic”

IGN

“…a cohesive musical story from start to finish.”

FORBES

“The music truly excels”

RAPID REVIEWS

“The music is amazing. James Hannigan returns, expands the original … Brilliant Music.”

GAMEWATCHER

James Hannigan is a composer, producer, and conference founder - with credits spanning multi-million-selling video games, television, and bestselling audio drama. A BAFTA winner with multiple nominations, 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 titles in the Theme Park, Art Academy, The Lord of the Rings, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs series. A small number of his tracks have also been heard in Terraria and the Super Smash Bros. series | LISTEN

Among his audio drama and audiobook credits are some of the most listened-to productions in streaming history - from the Harry Potter audiobooks and Terry Pratchett's Discworld, to the full-cast, New York Times #1 series The Sandman (DC), the Audie Award-winning Alien series, Kingdom Come (DC), and BBC R4 adaptations of Neverwhere and Good Omens.

His other awards include a Webby People’s Choice Award for The Sandman: Act II (with James McAvoy, Michael Sheen, and Regé-Jean Page - featuring the haunting Song of Orpheus), and an IFMCA (International Film Music Critics Association) 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. (continues below)

(Montage conducted by Allan Wilson / James Hannigan / Johannes Vogel)

Credits include The Sandman Act III, Steelrising, Primeval (ITV/BBC America), Reign of Fire, Catwoman, Terraria: Otherworld, 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, The BAFTA-Nominated Evil Genius, Evil Genius 2, Republic: The Revolution, and Transformers Universe. His earliest credits include Privateer 2: The Darkening (with Christopher Walken, Clive Owen and John Hurt), Chris Roberts' 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 others.

More recently, 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.

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Between 2013 and 2020, Hannigan co-founded and organised the sold-out 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

An occasional 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 The Royal College of Music, The School of Sound, EIGF, Musicworks, Ludomusicology and the DEVELOP Conference. In 2012, he was a subject of BAFTA’s Conversations with Composers series at the Royal Albert Hall. 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

From his years as EA Europe's in-house composer to his early freelance career based at Pinewood Studios in London, Hannigan helped to devise pioneering music systems for interactive entertainment - for 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