Star Wars: The Clone Wars composer Kevin Kiner reveals that he has written more music for the space opera than anyone, including John Williams. In light of the animated prequel series coming back for its seventh and final season via Disney+, Kiner made the press rounds talking about his work for the popular franchise.
Since The Clone Wars revival was announced in 2018, fans had been eagerly waiting for its release, especially considering where the series was left off in 2014 after it was unceremoniously cancelled in the aftermath of Disney’s Lucasfilm acquisition. Additional episode were rolled out known as the “Lost Missions”, which in turn made up for its sixth season, with its upcoming final season picking up after that. Now that new episodes have started to roll out, viewers are being treated to Kiner’s latest Star Wars work.
Screen Rant had the pleasure of speaking with Kiner with regards to his return to the galaxy far, far away via The Clone Wars season 7. In the interview, he revealed that between his work on the aforementioned show and Star Wars Rebels, he has created countless hours of Star Wars music. This means that he has composed for the franchise more than anyone ever, including Williams.
Like Williams, who has established himself as the master composer for Star Wars films (having created the score for all nine episodic movies), Kiner has also made his mark in the universe by manning its animated show front. Aside from Star Wars Resistance, he has scored all of The Clone Wars (including its 2008 film), as well as Rebels. And he hopes that he’d be able to compose more music for the franchise for as long as Williams.
“As far as Clone Wars, it’s always going to have, because it’s Clone Wars, it’s always going to have that Star Wars John Williams palette as part of it, but I would say we get away from that more often than ever in season 7. And just kind of our own direction and the electronics really help that. I mean, I don’t know how many hours, I think I added it up one time, we did way over a hundred episodes of Clone Wars and I think close to a hundred episodes of Rebels, I mean I know I’ve written more Star Wars music than anyone ever alive, so I win if you get paid by the pound I guess.”
Kiner has a long work portfolio under his belt - creating music for all forms of media, including TV, movies, and even video games. He was nominated for multiple Daytime Emmy for his music for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, as well as winning several BMI Awards for CSI: Miami and Walker, Texas Ranger. While Williams’ music will forever be associated with Star Wars, Kiner can continue his work and carve out his own place in the franchise, particularly with small screen projects from Lucasfilm.
“…I don’t think guys like Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy and people who are running the ship, they haven’t made a wrong call as far as I can see, so I’m happy to do whatever comes next and all I can say is I hope I get to compose for Star Wars as long as John Williams has, so in my 80s and still cranking I’ll be really happy about that.”
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