In quite a surprise announcement, we’ve learnt that David Arnold (who has written the score for the last 6 Bond movies) has not been asked back to work on Skyfall. Instead, the job will go to Thomas Newman, who is a long-time collaborator with director Sam Mendes.

Clearly, the relationship with the director won out over prior experience with the Bond franchise. It will be interesting to see how Newman tackles the music, as he is more well known for more emotional films, and has little ‘action’ experience.

Whilst I am a fan of David Arnold’s work – I can understand how some will welcome this news. Certainly it bodes well that Mendes is all up for making changes and coming up with something original – and hopefully – awesome.

Still no news on which artist will be performing the theme song though. It will be interesting to see if Thomas Newman will be contributing to the arrangement of the song, as many previous composers have done.