J.A. Bayona Re-Teams With Oscar-Winning Composer Michael Giacchino on ‘Society of the Snow’

Scott Roxborough
·2 min read

Spanish director J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, The Orphanage) is re-teaming with his Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom composer Michael Giacchino for his new project, La sociedad de la nieve (Society of the Snow). Netflix, which is producing the Spanish-language survival thriller, confirmed the news on Tuesday.

Society of the Snow aims to retell the story of the Uruguayan rugby team which, en route to Chile in 1972, crash-landed on a glacier in the heart of the Andes. The survivors were forced to resort to extreme measures in order to stay alive. Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques and Nicolás Casariego co-wrote the screenplay to Society of the Snow, adapting the non-fiction book La sociedad de la nieve by Pablo Vierci. Filming took place in 2022 in Spain, Uruguay and Chile including on location in the El Valle de las Lágrimas, where the real crash occurred.

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Commenting on his collaboration with Giacchino, Bayona called the Italian composer “chameleon-like” with “an extraordinary talent that allows him to shine in very different projects. I’m really excited that Society of the Snow is his first project in Spain and in Spanish. His very personal and elegant sensibility and his enormous skills to narrate through music are a joy for any director. His music for the film brings a special voice and energy that turns the Andes odyssey into an even more relevant, encouraging and universal story, if possible.”

A prolific and diverse composer, Giacchino is perhaps best known for his scores for such Pixar hits as Ratatouille, which earned him an Oscar nomination, and Up, which secured the Italian composer the Academy Award for best original score in 2010. Giacchino’s long resume also includes scores for The Incredibles, Coco, Jojo Rabbit, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Batman, Jurassic World: Dominion and Spider-Man: Homecoming. He has also directed the Disney+ TV special Werewolf by Night and one of the stand-alone short films in the Star Trek: Short Treks series.

The event of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was turned into the 1993 feature Alive by director Frank Marshall starring Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano and Josh Hamilton. The fateful crash and the story of the team’s survival were also a clear inspiration for the Showtime hit series Yellowjackets.

The cast of The Society of the Snow includes Enzo Vogrincic Roldán, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Tomas Wolf, Diego Ariel Vegezzi, Esteban Kukuriczka, Francisco Romero, Rafael Federman, Felipe González Otaño, Agustín Della Corte, Valentino Alonso, Simón Hempe, Fernando Contigiani García, Benjamín Segura and Jerónimo Bosia.

Netflix will release the film worldwide. A release date has not yet been set.

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