CLOUD ATLAS SOUNDTRACK DUE OCTOBER 23rd
FROM WATERTOWER MUSIC
 
Featuring Original Music by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, and Reinhold Heil
 
(October 19, 2012 – Los Angeles, CA) – WaterTower Music will release the Cloud 
Atlas: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack at all digital retailers on October 
23, with a physical CD release to follow on November 6. The original music was 
composed by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, and Reinhold Heil.  Tykwer also 
shares screenwriting and directing credits with filmmakers Lana Wachowski and 
Andy Wachowski, in bringing David Mitchell’s best-selling novel to the big 
screen in the October 26th release Cloud Atlas.
 
Music is a central part of the Cloud Atlas story, particularly in one sequence 
of the film’s narrative involving  a young composer who struggles to complete 
his life’s work, entitled The Cloud Atlas Sextet.  This musical theme then 
recurrs throughout the film and  helps to connect multiple threads of action 
together as a single story moving through time.
 
“It’s an ever-present melody from a simple string line to a riff in a 1970s 
rock piece, to a jazz sextet playing in the background at the Cavendish party.  
We needed something beautiful and malleable enough to take us through five 
centuries,” said Tykwer. “There are lots of subjective voices in the story, and 
we were searching for one voice that could encompass them all, to form a 
beautiful choir.”
 
Because of this the three composers began working on the music before a single 
frame of film was shot.
 
“He prefers this to using temporary music by other composers,” Heil explained.  
“It allows him to use the temp score without worrying about what will take its 
place.  As the film takes shape in post-production, we see what’s missing or 
needs changing and re-record the final.”
 
In the powerful and inspiring epic Cloud Atlas, drama, mystery, action and 
enduring love thread through a single story that unfolds in multiple timelines 
over the span of 500 years.  Characters meet and reunite from one life to the 
next.  Born and reborn.  As the consequences of their actions and choices 
impact one another through the past, the present and the distant future, one 
soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and a single act of kindness ripples 
across centuries to inspire a revolution.
 
Everything is connected.
 
Academy Award® winners Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, Forrest Gump) and Halle Berry 
(Monster’s Ball) lead a stellar international cast that also includes 
Oscar® winner Jim Broadbent (Iris), Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben 
Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Xun Zhou, Keith David and David Gyasi, with 
Oscar® winner Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking) and Hugh Grant.  Each member of 
the ensemble appears in multiple roles as the story moves through 
time.  Cloud Atlas is produced by Grant Hill, Stefan Arndt, Lana Wachowski, 
Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski, with executive producers Philip Lee, Uwe Schott 
and Wilson Qui. 
The Cloud Atlas — Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on WaterTower Music will 
be available digitally on October 23, and as a physical CD November 6, 2012.

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http://cloudatlas.warnerbros.com/
 
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS
Tom Tykwer is one of Germany’s most exciting filmmakers and a triple threat 
(writer, director, composer). In 1999, he made his international breakthrough 
with the adrenaline-fuelled Run Lola Run, which, as well as directing, he also 
wrote and co-composed with Klimek and Heil. The film was both a commercial and 
critical success, going on to become the most successful German film of that 
year.  He followed this with The Princess and the Warrior, and then with his 
first English-language film, Heaven.  In 2006, Tykwer co-wrote 
and directed Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. His next film was the 
sleek thriller The International. Most recently he completed the German 
language film 3 (Drei).
 
Reinhold Heil was born in a small town in West Germany and trained to become a 
classical pianist.  While studying at the Berlin Music Academy, Heil became 
Nina Hagen’s keyboardist, co-writer, and co-producer and for the next few 
years honed his craft in what became the legendary Nina Hagen Band.  
After Hagen left the group, the remaining band members formed Spliff, one 
of Germany’s most successful rock bands of the 1980s. 
 
Born in Australia, Johnny Klimek paid his dues in a series of gritty pub bands 
before migrating to Berlin to form the ‘80s pop ensemble “The Other Ones” with 
his siblings.  He segued into the club music scene on his own in the ’90s, and, 
out of the latter emerged his creative marriages to both Heil and Tykwer. 
 
Among Klimek and Heil’s credits are Killer Elite, the TV series Awake, One Hour 
Photo, the acclaimed TV series Deadwood, and the theme song for Without a 
Trace.  Up next for the duo is I, Frankenstein, starring Bill Nighy and Aaron 
Eckhart, slated for release in February.
 
 
For more information contact: [email protected], or @cinemediapromo on 
Twitter

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