Michael Giacchino is an accomplished composer who has worked on many film, TV and video game projects including Medal of Honor, Lost, Alias, Up, The Batman, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Star Trek and many more. He also ventured into directing with the Marvel Studios’ Disney + special, Werewolf by Night. Additionally, the composer is working on The Fantastic Four: First Steps and has released a new album featuring his music rendered in the 1950s Exotica style.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Giacchino about his many projects, which you can check out below.

Giacchino wrote the Fantastic Four: First Steps theme that can be heard during the Marvel Studios drone show above Petco Park and its Hall H presentation at San Diego Comic-Con last week. The film is directed by Matt Shakman, who is known for directing WandaVision.

“I think what Matt Shakman, who is directing Fantastic Four, is bringing to the table is very fresh, very fun, very different,” Giacchino tells Nerd Reactor. “And even on the outside, you go ‘Oh, this is that! They actually aren’t and they’re very different and unique in different ways. And we’re going to do that with the music as well. So I’m just excited to work on that film. It’s it’s really going to be a fun, fun project, for sure.”

Giacchino is revisiting the past with his new album, Exotic Themes for the Silver Screen – Volume One, which includes many of his popular tracks that have been rendered in the retro lounge style of Exotica from the 1950s.

“When I was a kid, my dad had a couple of records in his collection that were Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, things like that,” the composer said about his inspiration for the album. “And I loved those records so much because I was able to listen to them and be transported to a make-believe place. And it’s one of the reasons I always loved listening to film scores. They transported me to a different place, and usually the place that they would take me would be back to that movie or back to that story.

“When I would listen to something like these records, these old records, they would transport me to a brand new place that I was creating in my head. And I thought ‘What a fun thing to be able to combine those two ideas, take something that exists like the Star Trek music and what if we did it in this room? Could I then transport somebody to somewhere brand new? Who knows, but it was really just me. I wanted to hear it done in this fashion so badly for so many years, I thought it would just be fun to do.”

The album represents almost everything that Giacchino has worked on up until 2011, and if you enjoyed the album, expect a volume 2 on the way.

Michael Giacchino’s Exotic Themes for the Silver Screen – Volume One is available on Spotify, with the CD and Vinyl available at the online Mutant store.