Netflix Theatrical Logo Was Scored by Hans Zimmer
The second Netflix logo that appears in movie theaters is revealed to have been scored by Hans Zimmer.
I still the first time I saw and heard the Hans Zimmer.
Indeed, the theatrical logo, which is several years old now, has played before theatrical screenings of multiple awards contenders and Netflix films making their debuts at film festivals: Outlaw King, among many others. Yet, intriguingly, you only hear it if you’ve seen Netflix films in the theater. That’s by design as unpacked in Dallas Taylor’s latest Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. Speaking with Netflix executives like Todd Yellin, vice president of Product at Netflix, and Tanya Kumar, a brand design lead, Taylor heard the origins of the “ta-dum” sound, which was always meant to be only three or four seconds—appealing to that ‘click and play content now’ need of modern streaming content—as well as the theatrical logo.
“We were sitting in the theater and the ‘ta-doo’ would come on and it would feel so short and so abrupt that you really didn’t quite understand what you saw before you dove right into the film,” Kumar said on the podcast. This led to some reevaluation of how the logo should be presented in cinemas. “If you’re in a theater, you’re in for the long experience, whether it’s an hour and a half or it’s two hours. You’re here to hear the whole story, sit down and experience it in the theater.”
Thus the solution became to keep the famous ta-dum sound effect, but write a rousing musical intro around it, more in line with other film studios like the 20th Century Fox fanfare or Universal Pictures’ rotating globe and overture.
“We ended up working with Interstellar, and many more. But he’s also worked with the streamer in the past and has an industry-wide reputation with capturing what creatives want. According to Kumar, Zimmer came up with six or seven various compositions that were then narrowed to three, and finally the one we have now.
If you haven’t seen a Netflix film in theaters, above you can find the rousing intro, which builds like a crescendo of anticipation until the ‘ta-dum’ releases viewers into the familiar comfort of the big N.
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David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…