The Gray Man (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film) is the score album composed by Henry Jackman for the 2022 film of the same name. The film, directed and produced by Russo Brothers is based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Mark Greaney and the first film in a franchise based upon Greaney's Gray Man novels. The film stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page, Wagner Moura, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard, and Billy Bob Thornton.
Jackman began writing the entire scoring without watching any sequences from the film. He wrote a 17-minute suite for the film during March–December 2021, and derived the entire themes from the suite. Additional score recording and orchestration were done in April 2022. The score suite was released as a single from the album on July 15, and the soundtrack was released by Netflix Music on July 22, coinciding the film's release.
Development
The film marked Jackman's fourth film with the Russo Brothers, following Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Cherry (2021). He began writing the score on March 2021, with a 17-minute long score suite and completed within December. Initially, he did not write longer suites for films, excluding The Winter Soldier, which he had written a stand-alone piece. But for The Gray Man, he wrote a longer suite as it "contains almost all the ideas you need for the rest of the movie in some form or another."
During the period, Russo brothers asked him to write a score, for the scene, that focuses Six’s (Ryan Gosling) internal trauma and "got a 'ghost in the machine' element showing that he was inarticulate for no reason". Jackman recorded demo pieces of the score in his IPhone and played it through piano, then he used a backward reverb effect and fine-tuned the cue. The theme started with an offbeat percussion sound, that invoked the classical 5/4 rhythm from Mission: Impossible theme and designed the percussion themes, that incorporates tick-tock figures, eerie music and minor chords, which Jackman described it as "very espionage". This suite served as the overture of all the film's themes.
Jackman chipped some parts of the piece, referring to record producer Trevor Horn's work in Art of Noise album, played few bar sounds. As the score getting expanded, he used atonal jazz chords with brass, referencing David Shire's score from The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), that served as the theme for the antagonist Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans). He used an expansive bass-line, and larger brass instruments, which referred Henry Mancini's signature-style brass sound. When the film's final edit was completed, Jackman sent the full score suite to Russo brothers, who finally approved, and Jackman later worked on specific pieces to be composed, except for most of the pieces as "it had its origin somewhere in the suite".
In April 2022, Jackman recorded the orchestral parts of the film in London at the Abbey Road Studios and AIR Studios. The orchestra, consisted of an 80-piece ensemble, mostly strings and brass, while an array of instruments include violin, viola, cello, double bass, trombones, French horn, trumpet, treble woodwinds, piano, harp and saxophone The musicians recorded the pieces separately due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Jackman used hand-made percussions, which recorded using synthesizers imported from 1970s, to make it sound analog; he engineered the sounds using sample collections of cymbals and bass to create unusual sound.