Nine Inch Nails announce inaugural Future Ruins festival celebrating iconic film and television composers

Nine Inch Nails have announced the a new festival that celebrates film and television composers.

The rock icons started dropping hints for Future Ruins on social media overnight, leading fans to a new website. Now, details of the inaugural event – which is the first of its kind – have been revealed. Created and curated by award-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the festival is presented by Live Nation will see some of the world’s most influential film and television composers step out from behind the screen and onto the stage.

The day-long event will be held on November 8 and set across three stages at the Equestrian Center in Los Angeles.

It is designed to be an immersive experience, bringing the music from film and television to an environment where it has never been heard before, and encourages the artists to “take big swings and reimagine their work for a live audience – with performances ranging from electronic sets and live bands to orchestral performances.

The concept comes as Ross and Reznor have a rich history writing scores for film, as well as working together in Nine Inch Nails. Their award-winning work has included the composition for music in Watchmen, Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Soul, Challengers and more.

The latter three saw them bag wins at the Golden Globes in 2010, 2020 and 2025 respectively, and the Luca Guadagnino movie Challengers also saw them shortlisted for both Best Original Score and Original Song at the 2025 Academy Awards. Since then, they have teamed up with Guadagnino again for the Daniel Craig-featuring film Queer, and also signed on as composers for the upcoming Disney sci-fi flick Tron: Ares.

Speaking about Future Ruins, Reznor said it was “about giving people who are, literally, the best in the world at taking audiences on an emotional ride via music the opportunity to tell new stories in an interesting live setting”.

He added: “There’s no headliner. There’s no hierarchy. This is a stacked lineup of visionaries doing something you might not see again.”

The line-up includes Danny Elfman – the composer behind films including Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Men in Black and Good Will Hunting – as well as John Carpenter (Halloween, They Live, The Thing), Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker, Chernobyl, A Haunting in Venice), Cristobal Tapia de Veer (Smile, The White Lotus, Black Mirror) and Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (Stranger Things, Lost in the Night).

Questlove is on the bill too – presenting the score works of Curtis Mayfield – as are Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor themselves.

The Future Ruins line-up is:

Cristobal Tapia de Veer (Babygirl, Smile, The White Lotus, Black Mirror, Utopia (UK), Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, Ponyboi, The Third Day, National Treasure (UK), The Girl With All The Gifts, Humans)

Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow (Ex Machina, Civil War, Men, Drokk, Annihilation, Luce, Free Fire, Black Mirror, Devs)

Danny Elfman (Batman, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Men in Black, Good Will Hunting, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Big Fish, Alice In Wonderland, Spider-Man, Milk)

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin (Suspiria, Profondo Rosso/Deep Red, Dawn of the Dead, Demons, Tenebrae, Phenomena, Opera)

Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker, Chernobyl, A Haunting in Venice, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Mary Magdalene, Tár, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Women Talking, Hedda)

A performance of Howard Shore’s score of David Cronenberg’s Crash

Isobel Waller-Bridge (Munich: The Edge of War, Emma., Black Mirror, I Came By, Wicked Little Letters, Fleabag, The Lesson, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Magpie, Sweetpea)

John Carpenter (Halloween, They Live, The Thing, Christine, Escape From New York)

Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein (Stranger Things, Lost in the Night, The Hole in the Fence, Spheres, Native Son, Butterfly, Retaliators, Valley of the Boom)

Mark Mothersbaugh (The Life Aquatic, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Rugrats, The Lego Movie, A Minecraft Movie, Cocaine Bear, Thor: Ragnarok)

Questlove (presents the score works of Curtis Mayfield)

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Candyman, Master, Telemarketers, The Color of Care, Grasshopper Republic, Power, Unvion, Seeds, Life After)

Tamar-kali (Mudbound, Shirley, The Assistant, The Fire Inside, The Last Thing He Wanted, Come Sunday, Palmer, The Lie, Little Richard: I am Everything)

Terence Blanchard (BlacKkKlansman, Malcolm X, Inside Man, Da 5 Bloods, When the Levees Broke, One Night in Miami, The Woman King, Perry Mason)

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (The Social Network, Watchmen, Gone Girl, Soul, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Challengers, Empire of Light, Waves, The Vietnam War, Mank, The Killer)

Volker Bertelmann AKA Hauschka (All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave, Lion, The Amateur, Dune: Prophecy, The Day of the Jackal, Hollywoodgate, Adrift, War Sailor, The Old Guard, Stowaway, Patrick Melrose)

Tickets for the festival will be available next Wednesday (May 21) at 12pm PT. Visit here for tickets and more information.

The announcement comes after Nine Inch Nails announced a huge ‘Peel It Back’ tour back in January. Those shows will mark their first shows since 2022 and see them take to the stage in the UK, Europe and North America this summer. For the tour, they’ll be supported by Boys Noize and you can visit here to find remaining tickets.

In other NIN news, last year Trent Reznor announced that the band had been in the studio working on new material, adding that they were “ready to be back in the driver’s seat.” A new record would mark their first since the surprise 2020 ambient double album ‘Ghosts V-VI’, which followed 2018’s ‘Bad Witch’.