Film and television
Giacchino's work on various video games led to his entrance into television.
In 2001, J. J. Abrams, producer of the television series Alias, discovered Giacchino through his video game work and asked him to provide the new show's soundtrack. The soundtrack featured a mix of full orchestral pieces frequently intermingled with upbeat electronic music, a departure from much of his previous work. Giacchino would go on to provide the score for Abrams' 2004 television series Lost, creating an acclaimed score which employed a unique process of using spare pieces of a plane fuselage for percussion parts. The score for Lost is also notable for a signature thematic motif: a brass fall-off at the end of certain themes. Just like his counterpart, Stu Phillips, he worked with the television show creator Abrams on his shows with his music scores while Abrams supplied the show's main themes on certain series such as Alias.
In 2004, Giacchino received his first big feature film commission. Brad Bird, director of Pixar's The Incredibles, asked Giacchino to provide the soundtrack for the film after having heard his work on Alias. The upbeat jazz orchestral sound was a departure in style not only for Giacchino but for Pixar, which had previously relied on Randy and Thomas Newman for all of its films. Director Brad Bird had originally sought out John Barry – perhaps best known for his work on the early James Bond films—but Barry was disinclined to repeat the styles of his earlier works.
Giacchino was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2005 for The Incredibles: Best Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media and Best Instrumental Composition.
Like his other counterparts, Joel McNeely, J. A. C. Redford and Frank DeVol, Giacchino mostly associated with Disney from early in his career up to most recently, ranging from video games such as Mickey Mania and Gargoyles to films such as The Incredibles and eventually collaborated with Walt Disney Imagineering in creating two new soundtracks for the updated versions of Space Mountain at Disneyland, Space Mountain: Mission 2 at Disneyland Paris, and Space Mountain at Hong Kong Disneyland.
Giacchino composed scores for the 2005 films Sky High and The Family Stone, and the television movie The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. Additionally, he wrote the music for Joseph Barbera's final theatrical Tom and Jerry cartoon The Karate Guard, and scored the Abrams-directed 2006 film Mission: Impossible III. Giacchino's next musical achievement was his Paris-inspired score for the Disney-Pixar film Ratatouille, which includes the theme song "Le Festin", performed by French artist Camille. He received his first Academy Award nomination for this score. He also created the score for Abrams' 2009 Star Trek film.
Giacchino scored the Pixar film Up (and its accompanying animated short Partly Cloudy), for which he collaborated with director Pete Docter. This marked the first time Giacchino worked with a Pixar director other than Brad Bird. This work gained Giacchino his first Academy Award for Best Original Score: the first-ever win for Pixar in that category. Giacchino notes that he won on the same night as his SVA classmate Joel Harlow won the Best Makeup Oscar for Star Trek.
Giacchino has continued his collaboration with J. J. Abrams. For the Abrams-produced monster film Cloverfield, he wrote an homage to Japanese monster scores in an overture titled "ROAR!", which played over the credits, and constituted the only original music for the film. Giacchino composed the score for J. J. Abrams' feature Super 8 in 2011. He also composed for the pilot of the Abrams-produced American television series Fringe, after which Giacchino gave scoring duties to his assistant Chad Seiter, who scored the first half of season one. The task was then passed on to Chris Tilton, who scored the latter half of season one and all subsequent seasons.
In 2016, Giacchino composed the score for the Marvel film Doctor Strange, as well as the score for the Disney film Zootopia. He also composed the fanfare for the new Marvel Studios logo, which debuted with Doctor Strange. In September 2016, it was announced that Giacchino had been chosen to replace composer Alexandre Desplat as the composer for the Star Wars anthology film Rogue One after Desplat was unavailable following reshoots. Giacchino then scored four more Marvel films: 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home, 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, and 2022's Thor: Love and Thunder.
Giacchino returned to Pixar to score Coco (2017) and Incredibles 2 (2018). He also composed the score for Taika Waititi's 2019 film Jojo Rabbit. In 2022, Giacchino composed the score for The Batman, and the score for the Pixar film Lightyear.
In 2018, Giacchino wrote, directed, and scored Monster Challenge. The short film is a satirical take on Japanese game shows, starring Patton Oswalt, Ben Schwartz, Dermot Mulroney, Amy Brenneman, Benedict Wong, Tom Everett Scott, Taishi Mizuno, Ann Madox, and Teruko Nakajima. Monster Challenge originally premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2018 and premiered on YouTube on March 20, 2020. He continued with his directorial efforts with a Star Trek: Short Treks episode "Ephraim and Dot" in 2019.
On March 7, 2022, Variety reported that Giacchino was directing an upcoming as-of-yet untitled Marvel Studios television project for Disney+. Four days later, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that he would be directing Werewolf by Night, which was released on October 7, 2022.
