Kris Bowers Takes On Disney's Hexed
Kris Bowers has quietly become one of the most versatile composers working in film and television, and his latest assignment puts him inside the Disney Animation machine. He's scoring Hexed, the upcoming feature from directors Fawn Veerasunthorn and Jason Hand, with Josie Trinidad co-directing. If you've been tracking Bowers' trajectory, this isn't a surprise so much as a logical next step.
Look at the résumé. The Wild Robot, Green Book, King Richard, Bridgerton, Secret Invasion, The Color Purple, Haunted Mansion, Spider-Noir, Dear White People. That's a composer who can move between intimate piano-driven drama, sweeping orchestral animation, period string writing, and genre television without sounding like he's stretching. The Wild Robot in particular showed what he does when a film asks for both tenderness and scale — long melodic arcs that don't collapse into sentimentality, orchestration that knows when to pull back to a solo instrument. Disney Animation is a different beast entirely, but the skill set transfers.
What does a Disney Animation score actually demand? More than people outside the craft tend to assume. These films run on leitmotif — a theme for the protagonist, a theme for the antagonist, transformations of both as the story turns. The composer has to build a musical architecture that survives a 90-to-100-minute runtime, supports song sequences if there are any, and still lands emotionally in the third act. Hans Zimmer, Alan Menken, Michael Giacchino, Germaine Franco, Henry Jackman — the lineage is specific, and the expectation is that the score does narrative work, not just atmosphere.
Hexed, by title alone, suggests magic, transformation, maybe a curse with a comic or bittersweet edge. The directorial pairing is interesting: Veerasunthorn came up through Wish, and Hand through Moana 2. Both are filmmakers steeped in the modern Disney house style — big emotional swings, character-first storytelling, animation that leans into physicality. Bowers will need to write music that can pivot from whimsy to genuine menace without whiplash, and he's shown he can do that. Secret Invasion had him writing tension that didn't rely on noise. Haunted Mansion let him play in a lighter, spookier register. Put those instincts together and you have a composer who can handle a hex.
For those of us who score or curate, this matters on a practical level. Bowers is a good study composer. His cues tend to be structurally clear — you can hear where the theme enters, where it develops, where it resolves. That makes his work useful on playlists that sit next to other composers, and it makes him a reference point when you're trying to explain to a director why a certain approach works. He also writes for real players, which is increasingly a differentiator. The Wild Robot's score has weight because it was performed, not just programmed.
Disney Animation scores also tend to enter the wider listening conversation in a way that live-action scores often don't. They get vinyl releases, they get concert suites, they get pulled into study playlists by people who otherwise only listen to Zimmer or Giacchino. If Bowers delivers on Hexed, it's another entry point for listeners who might not know his drama work. That's good for the catalog, and it's good for the playlist side of what we do.
No release date details yet, and Bowers is deep in a busy stretch — Spider-Noir, The Wild Robot follow-ups, whatever else is on his slate. But Hexed is the one to watch. A composer with his range, working inside the studio that essentially invented the modern animated musical score, is the kind of pairing that produces records worth keeping. We'll be listening closely when the first cues land.