Hans Zimmer Receives Second Oscar

While most of the attention surrounding this year's Academy Awards has been directed at the conflict between actors Chris Rock and Will Smith, a range of film music was also honored at the ceremony on March 27.

Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of Dune took home the award for Best Original Score, with a score by Hans Zimmer. Also nominated were Don't Look Up (Nicholas Britell), Encanto (Germaine Franco), Parallel Mothers (Alberto Iglesias), and The Power of the Dog (Jonny Greenwood). Dune also received the award for Best Sound.

The award was only Zimmer's second Oscar, despite the fact that he has been nominated on twelve occasions; he initially won the Best Score prize for his 1994 soundtrack for The Lion King.

This year, many of the categories were pre-recorded, so Zimmer did not attend the ceremony. Instead, he was staying at a hotel in Amsterdam and heard the good news when his daughter woke him in the middle of the night.

Before the ceremony, Zimmer took the opportunity to draw attention to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. "Stories about displacement speak to the remarkable strength of the human spirit," he wrote on social media. "Five movies with these themes have been nominated for Oscars this weekend, including Dune. We stand together with refugees who are fleeing conflict and persecution around the world."

Despite receiving plenty of praise, Encanto's song "Dos Oruguitas" did not take out the Best Original Song award. The honor instead went to the new James Bond film No Time To Die, with a title track sung by Billie Eilish and written with brother Finneas O'Connell. Songs from the Bond franchise have typically been a shoo-in for this award, with Adele's track for Skyfall (2012) and Sam Smith's track for Spectre (2015) both being selected in previous years.