We’ll Finally Get to Hear John Carpenter’s Unused Score for Death of a Unicorn

John Carpenter is no stranger to the mercurial nature of Hollywood, having essentially been blackballed by the industry after The Thing flopped in 1982. Universal Pictures even went so far as to fire him from its adaptation of Stephen King's Firestarter (ultimately helmed by Mark L. Lester). Justice was ultimately served four decades later when Carpenter was tapped to score the studio's 2022 remake.

Sadly, the cutthroat cinema business doesn't seem to have learned a lasting lesson with regards to the visionary filmmaker who gave us Halloween, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live.

History doubled back on itself earlier this year when A24 scrapped Carpenter's original score for Death of a Unicorn in favor of a new soundtrack from Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco about a month before the movie's theatrical release. No reason was given and it was generally assumed that the world would never get to hear the Carpenter compositions, created alongside John's regular musical collaborators: Son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies. Turns out that assumption was wrong.

John Carpenter plans to release his score for Death of a Unicorn

Recently sitting down with The Los Angeles Times, Carpenter revealed that he still retains the rights to the unused score and plans to release it to the public in the near future.

Written and directed by Alex Scharfman, Death of a Unicorn is a horror-comedy aimed at satirizing humanity's flagrant disregard for the wonders of the natural world when dollar signs are involved. Scharfman even cited Carpenter as a major influence on the project, which tackles They Live's core theme of capitalism run amok.

“It's ambitious, but I wanted to make somebody’s favorite movie—the kind that invites you to return to it again and again for the sheer fun of it,” Scharfman explained in the official production notes. “So much of Death of a Unicorn’s DNA is rooted in the escapist populism that filmmakers like Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, James Cameron, and Steven Spielberg perfected in the ‘80s and '90s. Hopefully the movie feels new in its construction, but familiar in its feeling."

Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega lead the ensemble as father-daughter duo Elliot and Ridley Kintner, who accidentally run over a juvenile unicorn on their way to a weekend retreat with Elliot's terminally ill billionaire boss, Odell (Richard E. Grant). But when it turns out the mythical creature's blood has miraculous healing properties, a newly-cured Odell and his greedy family members (played by Téa Leoni and Will Poulter) attempt to exploit the unicorn for financial gain. Their golden business opportunity comes crashing down when the unicorn's angry parents turn up looking for revenge.

“The true evil in the world comes from people,” Carpenter told the LA Times. “I know that nature’s pretty rough, but not like men. You see pictures of lions taking down their prey and you see the face of the prey and you say: ‘Oh, man.’ Humans do things like that and enjoy it. Or they do things like that for power or pleasure."