The soundtrack for Universal Pictures’ The Purge will be released June 4, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.
Film and video game composer Nathan Whitehead scored Universal Pictures’ The Purge, which stars Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey as members of a family who live in an America in which all laws are suspended for 12 hours once a year. The couple, along with their child and a stranger, attempt to survive the night as killers try to break into their home.
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Universal’s in-house record label, Back Lot Music, will release the soundtrack.
“Scoring The Purge was a fascinating and haunting exploration into what we value as a society and how far will we go in the name of greater social good,” Whitehead said. “Sonically, this was such a fun world to develop as I got to record and process a lot of strange sounds to create our own vocabulary for the score — everything from spring rattles and noisy toys to whooshing traffic and subway tunnels.”
Whitehead’s other credits include contributing music and arrangements to ABC’s Desperate Housewives, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and the Xbox 360 game Gears of War: Judgment. He said for The Purge, he used a “gritty, textural palette” to tell two stories through music.
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“Will we survive the night, and even if we do, what does this say about us as human beings?” he said. “I found this combination of tense action and human drama to be so compelling, and it was really rewarding to express that musically.”
The Purge hits theaters June 7 and is directed by James DeMonaco, who previously wrote Assault on Precinct 13 and The Negotiator. Its producers include Jason Blum of Blumhouse (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister), Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and as Sebastien Kurt Lemercier (Assault on Precinct 13).
Visit the film’s Facebook page for more, and watch the trailer below.
