According to Variety, Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Papers (2017), before titled The Post, will be scored traditionally by the one and only John Williams. However, Spielberg’s soon to follow Ready Player One (2018) will be scored instead by Alan Silvestri, of Back to the Future (1985), Forrest Gump (1994), and The Avengers (2012) fame.

Alan Silvestri’s latest work was last fall’s Allied (2016), starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. John Williams’ latest work was Spielberg’s The BFG (2016), but of course his music will be heard this December in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017).

For those who are fans of John Williams or Steven Spielberg or their collaborative efforts, they will know that the two of them are basically inseparable, having only not worked together on a total of two feature films: The Color Purple (1985), instead composed by Quincy Jones (In the Heat of the Night (1967), In Cold Blood (1967)), and Bridge of Spies (2015), instead composed by Thomas Newman (Finding Nemo (2003), Skyfall (2012)). Bridge of Spies was the first time in thirty years that these two minds did not work together (Williams had conflicts with Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)). And now it looks like Ready Player One will be added to that list.

While it is surprising these two creative geniuses will not be working on another film together, it becomes less of a shocker if one looks at the release schedule. The Papers will be having a mid-January release, while Ready Player One will be coming out late March, just over two months later. This would make it very difficult, near impossible for Williams to compose the score for both of these films in such a little time frame. We can blame that on The Papers, because while Ready Player One has been in development for some time now, it was only recently announced to go forward with The Papers, due to the current political and economic climate we all are living in. Williams also has his hands full right now with the aforementioned Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

It is very exciting however that this will be the first official collaboration between Alan Silvestri and Steven Spielberg, although the two have certainly had dealings before. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer on the Back to the Future trilogy, for which Silvestri composed the iconic music.

We are sad to lose John Williams for Ready Player One, but Alan Silvestri is one of the best film composers in the business with some of the most memorable themes in film history, so both musical scores are sure to be great, and we can’t wait to hear them.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, The Papers will star Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Alison Brie, and David Cross, and will hit the presses on January 12, 2018. Music by John Williams.

Also directed by Steven Spielberg, Ready Player One will star Hannah John-Kamen, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller, Ben Mendelsohn, Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Mark Rylance, and plugs into theaters on March 30, 2018. Music by Alan Silvestri.