Jean-Christophe Beck (born 1968) is a Canadian composer of film and television scores. He is best known for his collaborations with Disney and its subsidiaries, which include composing the soundtracks of The Muppets (2011) and Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Frozen (2013) and Frozen 2 (2019), the Marvel Cinematic Universe works Ant-Man (2015), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), WandaVision (2021), Hawkeye (2021), and Agatha All Along (2024).
He composed the scores for several of Shawn Levy's films, including Big Fat Liar (2002), Just Married (2003), Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Pink Panther (2006), The Internship (2013), and Free Guy (2021). He is also known for composing the scores of the The Hangover (2009-13) film series, the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel, and the Disney's 100th anniversary logo.
Beck won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and was nominated for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series or Movie for WandaVision. He is also a Grammy Award and a two-time Gemini Award nominee.
Beck was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec. His younger brother, Jason (b. 1972) is a composer, pianist, and rapper under the stage name Chilly Gonzales.
Beck started piano lessons at the age of five, and by the time he turned eleven, he was learning Bee Gees songs by ear and performing with his first band, Newton Talks, who licensed a song to Hot Tub Time Machine. He attended Crescent School where he studied piano, saxophone, and drums. He wrote two musicals while studying music at Yale University.
Upon graduation, Beck moved to Los Angeles to attend USC's film scoring program, where he studied with Jerry Goldsmith. A personal recommendation from Buddy Baker, then head of the USC Music Department, led to his first assignment for a Canadian TV series called White Fang. Several TV series later, he was asked to score the second season of the WB Network show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Beck received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for his score to the Buffy episode "Becoming, Part 1".
In 2000, the cheerleading comedy Bring It On launched Beck's film career. His credits include Under the Tuscan Sun, Edge of Tomorrow, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Pitch Perfect, and the Hangover trilogy. More recently, Beck scored the Oscar- and Grammy-winning animated film Frozen, and several installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). At the D23 Expo in 2022, it was announced that Beck had composed a new arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" to accompany Disney's 100th anniversary logo, conducted by Tim Davies, which debuted ahead of the film Strange World.
Beck works out of his studio in Santa Monica, California.
Music of the Marvel Cinematic Universe