Hans Zimmer’s Dune 2 Score Won A Major Award After Being Disqualified From The Oscars

“Dune: Part Two” is one of the most widely hailed blockbusters in recent memory, with the film set to compete for the night’s biggest prize at the Oscars next month. Director Denis Villeneuve’s beloved sequel is nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, as well as a slew of other prizes. But music maestro Hans Zimmer isn’t competing in the Best Original Score category, as his soundtrack for the film didn’t qualify. As painful as that may have been, Zimmer did recently take home another major award for his work on the movie.

At the 67th Grammy Awards last night, Zimmer’s “Dune: Part Two” score took home the prize for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media. It beat out the likes of “American Fiction” (Laura Karpman), “Challengers” (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), “The Color Purple” (Kris Bowers), and FX’s hit series “Shogun” (Rick Chuba, Atticus Ross, and Leopold Ross). None of those films were nominated for Best Original Score at the 2025 Oscars; the scores for “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Perez,” “Wicked,” and “The Wild Robot” picked up nominations, but “American Fiction” and “The Color Purple” came out the previous year, “Shogun” is a TV series (and is therefore ineligible for an Oscar), and the “Challengers” score was inexplicably snubbed.

Not that moviemaking should be about awards, but it can feel like a sore spot when one of the most widely praised elements of a movie nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars isn’t recognized by The Academy, particularly since Zimmer won Best Original Score for his work in 2021’s “Dune.” But that, in itself, is part of the issue when it comes to why the sequel isn’t in the race this time around.

The Academy determined that the “Dune: Part Two” soundtrack was not eligible for the Oscars. Why, exactly? “In cases such as sequels and franchises from any media, the score must not use more than 20% of pre-existing themes and music borrowed from previous scores in the franchise,” the organization’s rules state. According to the folks who determine if a movie meets the proper standards for qualification, Zimmer used too much from the first “Dune” in the sequel.

Still, it doesn’t mean everyone has to be happy about the situation. “I am absolutely against the decision of the Academy to exclude Hans, frankly, because I feel like his score is one of the best scores of the year,” Villeneuve said in response to the Oscars not nominating Zimmer’s “Dune: Part Two” score. Whether or not Zimmer is offended is currently a bit of an unknown, but the Grammy win likely helps ease some of the sting.

The big question now is whether this will be a problem when Villeneuve’s “Dune Messiah,” aka “Dune 3,” gets underway. It hasn’t been confirmed whether or not Zimmer will be back to do the score for the third installment in the franchise based on Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novels, though it feels like a safe bet. Will Zimmer change it up more next time around to ensure a possible nomination? Or will he just do what feels like the best creative choice, regardless of any awards consideration? The latter feels like a certainty for one of the most prolific composers of the modern era.

You can grab the “Dune: Part Two” soundtrack on vinyl from Amazon.