Of all the music in the franchise, one theme has achieved renown above all others: ‘He’s a Pirate’. What’s the iconic song in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, and who wrote it? The final film in the series, Dead Men Tell No Tales, was scored by Geoff Zanelli, who had worked on all four previous instalments, too. Zimmer returned to score the second, third and fourth instalments of the franchise ( Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End, and On Stranger Tides, respectively), with additional help on the fourth film from Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, choral music icon Eric Whitacre, and Eduardo Cruz – younger brother of Penélope Cruz, who played Angelica in the film. Ultimately, Klaus Badelt was credited as the composer for the film’s soundtrack, Hans Zimmer as music producer, and ‘additional music’ credits were awarded to seven other composers, including Ramin Djawadi, Geoff Zanelli, and Steve Jablonsky. Between Zimmer and Badelt, the main themes were pieced together, and a team of composers was also enlisted to help orchestrate and provide additional scoring due to the tight timeline on the project.

Work got swiftly underway, but Zimmer couldn’t quite help himself from contributing a few of his ideas. Orlando Bloom stars alongside Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean. Read more: Hans Zimmer didn’t want to score ‘The Lion King’, but his 6-year-old daughter changed his mind “But then Gore got into a little bit of trouble and I said to him, ‘I can’t score this movie, there’s no way I can, but my friend Klaus probably can.’”

Zimmer told Soundtrack.Net in 2006: “I absolutely promised both Tom Cruise and Ed Zwick that I wasn’t going to moonlight on anything else, and when I made the promise, I really, really believed it!

The pirate: caribbean hunt