James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures and has scored over 100 films. The recipient of eight Academy Award nominations, some of Howard's best known film scores include Pretty Woman (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), Treasure Planet (2002), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005), I Am Legend (2007), Blood Diamond (2006),The Dark Knight (2008), and, most recently Green Lantern (2011), The Hunger Games (2012), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), The Bourne Legacy (2012), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), Maleficent (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1.
He is known for his frequent collaborations with director M. Night Shyamalan, having scored all his films since The Sixth Sense (1999). Howard also has a reputation of being a fast composer, due to his work on movies such as King Kong and The Hunger Games, both of which were composed in approximately one month.