Powell's first score was for the Season 4 of the TV series
Stay Lucky. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and scored his first major film,
Face/Off. It was followed by
Antz in 1998, the first film produced by
DreamWorks Animation, which he co-scored with fellow British composer
Harry Gregson-Williams, which also marked the duo's first score for an animated film. Two years later, Powell collaborated with composer
Hans Zimmer on the score for
The Road to El Dorado. Later that same year, he also teamed up with Harry Gregson-Williams again to compose the score to
Chicken Run and then again the following year on
Shrek. Gregson-Williams composed all the
subsequent Shrek films and the
sequel to
Chicken Run himself. In 2001 he also scored
Evolution,
I Am Sam,
Just Visiting and
Rat Race. In 2002 Powell was hired to score
The Bourne Identity for director
Doug Liman after
Carter Burwell left the project. He also returned to score the series' other two films,
The Bourne Supremacy and
The Bourne Ultimatum, under British director
Paul Greengrass. Powell collaborated with Liman again to score
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). That year he also scored
Robots for
Blue Sky Studios, and went on to score many of the studio's subsequent films until 2017's
Ferdinand. In 2006, he scored Greengrass'
United 93. He also composed music for his second Blue Sky film
Ice Age: The Meltdown, following
David Newman, who scored the first
Ice Age film; as well as
X-Men: The Last Stand and
Happy Feet, for which he won a Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for an Animated Feature Film. The next year he scored
The Bourne Ultimatum. In 2008 he reunited with Hans Zimmer and returned to DreamWorks Animation to score
Kung Fu Panda, and also wrote music for
Jumper, ''
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, Hancock, and Bolt. In 2009 he scored the third film of Ice Age
series; Dawn of the Dinosaurs''. In 2010, Powell composed the
score to
How to Train Your Dragon, which earned him a nomination for the
Academy Award for Best Original Score. It was his sixth DreamWorks Animation film, although the first where he composed the whole score himself. That year he also scored Greengrass's
Green Zone and
Knight and Day. In 2013, Powell took a sabbatical year from film scoring. In April 2014, after completing his scores to sequels
Rio 2 and
How to Train Your Dragon 2, he announced he would take another break to compose concert music, including a 45-minute oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I. The piece, "A Prussian Requiem", with a libretto by
Michael Petry, premiered on 6 March 2016 at The
Royal Festival Hall, London with
José Serebrier conducting the
Philharmonia Orchestra. Powell composed the score for
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), collaborating with
John Williams, who wrote Han Solo's theme. In 2019, Powell scored
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, the final film in the
How to Train Your Dragon series. In November 2023, it was announced that Powell would compose and produce the musical score for the 2024
Netflix and
Locksmith Animation film
That Christmas. In January 2024, it was announced that Powell would return to compose and produce the musical score for the
2025 live-action remake of
How to Train Your Dragon. In August 2024, it was confirmed that Powell will compose and conduct the incidental score for the
two-part film adaptation of
Wicked, in collaboration with the musical's composer
Stephen Schwartz. ==Filmography==