Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross win Golden Globe for ‘Challengers’ score

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have taken home a Golden Globe for their work on the Luca Guadagnino film Challengers.

• READ MORE: ‘Challengers’ review: Zendaya’s titillating tennis drama is one of the year’s best movies
  
  

The Nine Inch Nails members appeared at the ceremony for the 2025 Golden Globes overnight (January 6) and went on to win this year’s award for Best Original Score thanks to their work on the project.

It marked their third win at the ceremonies, following on from them winning in the same category for the first time in 2010 for The Social Network, and again in 2020 for the animated film Soul.

Although this was their only win of the night, Ross and Reznor were also nominated in the Best Original Song category too for ‘Compress/Repress’ – another track for Challengers. The trophy went to Camille, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Zoe Saldaña for the song ‘El Mal’, created for Emilia Perez.

The ceremony – hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser and held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, California – kicked off the film and TV industry’s awards season for this year. Awards season will culminate with the Oscars on March 3.

Reznor and Ross are also looking to add to their collection of awards at the latter too, as the 2024 Academy Awards has them shortlisted for both Best Original Score and Original Song for their work on Challengers.

Since the Zendaya-starring tennis flick, the Nine Inch Nails members have also teamed up with Luca Guadagnino again for the Daniel Craig-featuring film Queer, which arrived in cinemas last month. Back in 2024, it was also announced that they would be serving as composers on the upcoming Disney sci-fi flick Tron: Ares.

In a four-star review of Challengers NME wrote: “Throughout the film, there’s a palpable feeling of Guadagnino really enjoying himself, whether it’s finding original ways to spice up the tennis scenes (such as seemingly attaching a camera to a tennis ball during the rallies) or having fun with the romantic moments.

“The way the aforementioned threesome sequence plays out, for example, is a delicious tease, capped with a note-perfect facial expression from one of the characters,” it added. “The performances are exceptional, with off-the-scale chemistry between all three leads. Zendaya, in particular, is a force of nature, and you feel her angry frustration at her own career path.”

The film was also named as one of NME’s Best Films Of 2024 last month too, and praised for being “just as stylish, visually pleasing and passionate as expected”.

As for Reznor and Ross, both have continued to hint at new music from Nine Inch Nails, with the latter saying last year that: “I do feel excited about starting on the next record. I think we’re in a place now where we kind of have an idea.”

More recently, Reznor shared that the group were “taking the inspiration we’ve garnered and funnelling it into a Nine Inch Nails project, which we’re working on now. We’re ready to be back in the driver’s seat,” confirming that new material is in the works.

A new album would mark the band’s first since 2020’s surprise ambient double LP ‘Ghosts V-VI‘ which followed 2018’s ‘Bad Witch’.

At the premiere of Queer, the two also shared their top four films of all time, and the frontman revealed that the 1988 horror mystery classic Dead Ringers was a source of inspiration for music with Nine Inch Nails.

“The incredible sense of dread from the first frame to the end. You’re not sure what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be bad,” he explained. “I love it and it’s been a big inspiration for what I try to do with Nine Inch Nails. Make you feel bad, the whole time.”