Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor Reacts to ‘Surreal’ Oscar Nominations

Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who earned two 2021 Oscar nominations for Best Original Score, reacted to the news on Monday, with Reznor describing the nods to Billboard as “surreal and humbling and incredibly flattering.”

The duo, who secured an Academy Award in 2011 for David Fincher’s The Social Network, are now nominated for the Fincher drama Mank and computer-animated Pixar film Soul (with Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste). Describing the news, Reznor said, “[It’s] another thing that kind of doesn’t seem real in a year when everything starts to blur together. But we’re very grateful.”

Ross called Fincher, their frequent collaborator, “one of the greatest living directors.” Mank is nominated for Best Picture along with The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Minari, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Reznor also detailed their experience working for Pixar, noting that the company was on their “list of dream collaborators.”

“Why? Because we just love Pixar,” he continued. “There’s a humanity and a greatness to them that’s several notches above … I won’t even limit it to animation, there’s just a quality that always appealed to us. We thought if the right thing came along that we could do, hell yeah, we’d like to see how those guys work!”

Related: Stream Soul on Disney+ here

Reznor and Ross — who released a pair of Nine Inch Nails LPs, Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts, in 2020 — are nominated for Best Original Score alongside Terence Blanchard (Da 5 Bloods), Emile Mosseri (Minari) and James Newton Howard (News of the World). The Oscars ceremony will air April 25th at 8 p.m. ET.

In January, Reznor and Ross covered David Bowie’s “Fantastic Voyage” and “Fashion” as part of the “Just for One Day” tribute livestream.