Hans Zimmer slams Oscars over shocking 'Dune 2' score rejection

Renowned composer Hans Zimmer has broken his silence on the Academy’s decision to disqualify his Dune: Part Two score from the 2025 Oscars consideration.

While conversing with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the 67-year-old film score composer took a jab at the Academy and quipped that the decision was not “a sore point” but was “a foolish one” in his view.

Articulating his thoughts, Zimmer said, “You know something? It’s not really a sore point. It’s just such a stupid point—how can it be a sore point?”

He added, “I got disqualified because I was using material from the first movie in the second movie, but it’s not a sequel. It is the completion; both movies are one arc.”

“So was I supposed to go and take all the character themes away and write new character themes and develop them? It’s just a stupid rule. What I didn’t want to do is go and b**** about it,” the two-time Oscar winner stated.

For the unversed, towards the end of last year, an Academy review found that Zimmer used themes from 2021’s Dune, which broke the rules.

The rules say a film’s score must have at least “35% of the total music in the film.”

However, for sequels and franchises, the score cannot have “more than 20%” of music from earlier installments.