Oscar-Nominated Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson Has Died at 48

Johann Johannsson arrives at BAFTA British Academy Film Awards in 2015.

Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Jóhann Jóhannsson, the composer behind the scores for The Theory of Everything, Sicario, and Arrival, was found dead in his Berlin apartment on Friday, Variety reports. His Los-Angeles-based manager Tim Husom confirmed Jóhannsson’s death, saying the cause was unknown but that authorities in Berlin were investigating.

Jóhannsson had been writing film scores in his native Iceland since 2000, but broke internationally in 2013 with his score for Prisoners for director Denis Villeneuve. In 2014, he scored director James Marsh’s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a Grammy, a BAFTA award, and an Oscar. His collaboration with Villeneuve continued with Sicario in 2015, for which he received another Oscar nomination, and Arrival the next year.

Jóhannsson’s musical career wasn’t limited to film: He released several solo albums, from Englaborn in 2002 to Orphee in 2016. His work heavily featured electronic music, which was something of a family tradition: one of his albums, 2006’s IBM 1401, A User’s Manual, was inspired by recordings Jóhannsson’s father, a computer programmer, made of an IBM mainframe he’d programmed to “sing” decades ago.

Most recently, Jóhannsson wrote the score for James Marsh’s The Mercy, which opened in the U.K. on Friday, and, with frequent collaborator Hildur Guðnadóttir, the score for Garth Davis’ Mary Magdalene, which is slated for a March 16 release in the U.K. Neither film has U.S. release dates yet.

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