Kris Bowers Takes On Mr. Irrelevant

Kris Bowers is scoring Jonathan Levine's Mr. Irrelevant, the biographical sports drama starring David Corenswet. For anyone who tracks film music closely, this is one of those pairings that makes immediate sense and still leaves room to be surprised. Bowers has spent the last several years proving he can move between prestige television, animation, and broad commercial work without losing a distinct voice. Levine has a filmography that swings from zombie romance to holiday comedy to dramatic material, and he tends to favor scores that feel like they belong to the characters rather than the genre.

The project itself is about the label "Mr. Irrelevant," given each year to the last player selected in the NFL draft. That's a story built on being overlooked, on the gap between expectation and outcome, on a specific kind of American underdog mythology. It's biographical, it's sports, and it has a built-in arc: doubt, work, a shot, a result. The easy version of this score is a treacle-and-synth build to a big game. The interesting version keeps the doubt audible. Bowers is the kind of composer who can hold both.

Looking at his catalog — The Wild Robot, Bridgerton, Green Book, Spider-Noir, Secret Invasion, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Dear White People — the throughline is flexibility with a strong sense of place. Bridgerton's string arrangements are period-flavored but modern in their rhythmic instincts. The Wild Robot leans on warm orchestral writing with electronic texture underneath. Green Book stayed intimate and piano-forward without becoming a nostalgia exercise. He's not a composer who applies one signature sound to every assignment; he builds the palette around the story.

For Mr. Irrelevant, that probably means balancing the institutional weight of football — the draft room, the training facility, the broadcast machine — against the personal scale of one player's life. A score like that can use low brass and pulsing strings for the professional machinery, then strip down to solo piano or a single sustained synth line for the private moments. The trick is making sure the small, human material is what the audience remembers, not the stadium-sized cues. Sports dramas live or die on whether the quiet scenes carry as much tension as the big ones.

From a scoring perspective, there's also the question of regional texture. Football stories rooted in specific programs or cities often benefit from a light touch of local musical color, not as pastiche but as grounding. Bowers has done this before, threading genre references into scores without letting them dominate. If the film spends time in locker rooms, family homes, and draft-day green rooms, the score will need to shift registers without feeling like a playlist. That's a structural skill, and it's one of his strengths.

For curators and playlist builders, this is another entry in a catalog that already crosses over well. Bowers' work tends to sit comfortably in instrumental hip-hop, neo-classical, and modern score playlists because it's harmonic and rhythmic rather than purely atmospheric. Tracks from his scores often function as standalone pieces — they have melody, they have movement, they don't require the image to make sense. That matters for sync, for editorial, and for anyone building a mood around focus, ambition, or quiet resolve.

Mr. Irrelevant is also a reminder that the most interesting film music right now isn't always in the biggest franchises. It's in mid-budget dramas where a composer gets room to write themes, develop them, and let a character's interior life shape the arrangement. Bowers has been doing exactly that across a range of projects, and this one gives him a story with a built-in emotional structure. The draft is a countdown; the film is what happens after. That's a good frame for a score, and it's a good reason to pay attention.